Main reasons for departure, sex, ages and countries of destination of Cameroonian emigrants from 2000-2005

Teke Johnson TJT Takwa, Institut de Formation et de Recherche Demographiques (IFORD)

Emigration out of Cameroon is a phenomenon that has been going on for a very long time but it witnessed an unprecedented intensity during and after the social and economic crises that began in Cameroon in the mid 1980s. These crises were caused by many factors such as the fall in the prices of Cameroon’s export products and the improper management of the increasingly limited financial resources. In order to cope with the difficulties brought about by these crises, the government of Cameroon was forced to implement a series of temporal measures which included the reduction of the salaries of civil servants, the curtail of new recruitments into the public civil,the lay off of some state employees, the 50% devaluation of the national currency, the implementation of the Structural Adjustment Program which entails the withdrawal of state from some sectors , introduction of the payment of school fees in state universities,etc. All these led to enormous difficulties and many Cameroonians-those who had jobs and felt that they were lowly paid and those who could not find jobs started to leave in large numbers through both legal and illegal means. This massive exit of Cameroonians has raised much concern and for the first time, the government instructed the National Census Bureau to include questions on the sex, main reasons for departure, countries of destination, age at the time of departure for those who left Cameroon between 2000 and 2005 in the 2005 General Population and Housing Census. The findings showed that many people both males and females are leaving Cameroon and the main reason for departure is economic even though there are many other reasons. The study seeks to analyse the results of these findings under the following sectors-Sex, Ages, Main Reasons for Departure and Countries of destination of Cameroonian Emigrants