Poverty and corruption in Cameroon

Tim Harford:

You do not have to spend a long time in Cameroon to realize how much people resent the government. Much of government activity appears to be designed expressly to steal money from the people of Cameroon. According to the global watchdog Transparency International, Cameroon is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. I was warned so starkly about government corruption, and the likelihood that officials at the airport would attempt to relieve me of my wad of West African francs, that I was more nervous about that than the risk of malaria or a gunpoint mugging in the back streets of Douala.

Many people have an optimistic view of politicians and civil servants — that they are all serving the people and doing their best to look after the interests of the country. Other people are more cynical, suggesting that many politicians are incompetent and often trade off the public interest against their own chances of re-election. The economist Mancur Olson proposed a working assumption that government’s motivations are darker still, and from it theorized that stable dictatorships should be worse for economic growth than democracies, but better than sheer instability.

Olson supposed that governments are simply bandits, people with the biggest guns who will turn up and take everything. That’s the starting point of his analysis — a starting point you will have no trouble accepting if you spend five minutes looking around you in Cameroon. As Sam said, “There is plenty of money…but they put it in their pockets.”

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