In Nkoemvone, southern Cameroon, lies a vast site spanning over three hundred hectares, ten of which are developed. A paved road cuts through the area, dotted with dilapidated buildings and marked by a sign identifying it as the “Nkoemvone multipurpose agricultural station,” under the authority of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. Though the structures are severely decayed, the station remains operational, at least in agronomic research: multiplying and distributing cocoa seedlings has become its main activity.
Founded in 1944, this site stands as one of the major remnants of colonial modernity. The “Nkoemvone experimental cocoa station” fits what historian Hélène Blais calls the “garden-object” within the French colonial empire, especially during the twentieth century when plant reproduction became the dominant activity. Less documented than other colonial stations, such as Bambey in Senegal, it nonetheless participated—like its counterparts—in migrating, displacing, introducing, and relocating plants, specifically cocoa varieties, with the aim of provoking changes in colonised societies. Its history was ultimately brief, and its ambitions collided with the challenges of independent Cameroon.
The economic and social crisis of 1929, though softened in colonised Africa by the metropolis acting as a buffer, triggered a profound shift in French colonial policies. It condemned the trade economy and pushed the colonial state to take charge of infrastructure and export crops, while also forcing it to consider the living conditions of colonised populations. The colonial state thus became “developmentalist.” This turn was confirmed at the Brazzaville conference from 30 January to 8 February 1944, chaired by Charles de Gaulle, which pursued a dual objective: revive the French economy and improve the lot of the colonised through planned development.
“Popularising good producer subjects”
On the agricultural question, a dominant narrative prevailed: African societies were seen as essentially peasant, so improving their fate meant increasing yields through massive investment in agriculture. This logic led to a proliferation of agronomic research institutions across the French empire, with Cameroon serving as a privileged observation ground. By decree on 8 June 1944, the governor of French Cameroon, Eugène Paul Carras, abolished the Technical Council for Agriculture and Livestock and replaced it with three separate services: Agriculture, Livestock, and Forestry.
This reorganisation, beyond a simple administrative measure, aimed to give agriculture a dedicated service. According to agronomist Pierre Barthe, former head of Cameroon’s agriculture service, in a 1946 report, the new Agriculture Service was structured into several sub-services. One of them primarily comprised agronomic research institutions, including three experimental stations at Dschang, Maroua, and Nkoemvone. All these stations were created during the interwar period, except the Nkoemvone experimental cocoa station, founded in 1944 following the 8 June reforms. It is thus the quintessential product of the modernisation of colonialism that emerged during the interwar years.
The Nkoemvone experimental cocoa station was established gradually. According to agronomist Raymond Juliat, head of the agriculture service in 1944, it initially lacked an official text and had the role of “selecting cocoa trees to popularise only good producer subjects.” In 1947, three hundred hectares were requisitioned to host it, but construction work stalled due to a shortage of labour and materials, and “the absence of an overall plan.” Despite these difficulties, the colonial administration confirmed in 1948 its vocation to encompass all research and experimentation work, before officially instituting it by regulatory text the following year. Construction then began, funded by the cocoa fund.
Forced labour?
But setting up the Nkoemvone experimental station faced significant practical difficulties. As station director Jean Braudeau noted in his 1949 annual report, a lack of staff prevented construction, road development, creation of a nursery, and 15 hectares of plantations. He nevertheless managed to recruit a few temporary workers from a nearby village, often paid by the task. The question of whether this labour was voluntary or forced remains difficult to decide: although High Commissioner René Hoffherr began banning forced recruitment upon his arrival in 1947, Cameroonian historian Léon Kaptué recalls that the French administration continued to mobilise forced labour until 1949.
To attract workers from beyond the region, the colonial administration chose to build housing within the station, a common practice of colonial administrations, as historian Gwendolyn Wright notes. These workers were expected not only to participate in the station’s construction but also in agronomic research activities.
Agronomist Achille Pacilly, who succeeded Jean Braudeau as head of the experimental station in 1949, revealed that a labour camp was first established, consisting of twenty huts made from local materials. In 1956, fifty-eight permanent huts were built, housing some 130 to 140 families a few years later. The advent of the labour camp thus solved the workforce issue.
Alongside these lodgings, houses for senior staff were also erected. Added to these were research laboratories, a water supply and electricity system, an infirmary, and numerous large-scale facilities such as nurseries and collection gardens of cocoa varieties. In short, the station constituted a site where living spaces and research spaces were closely intertwined. The station’s development was completed in 1959, on the eve of the country’s independence.
An instrument of colonial propaganda
Beyond being a place of science, the Nkoemvone experimental station also functioned as an instrument of colonial propaganda for the French administration. This propaganda took place in a particular Cameroonian context—the 1950s, marked by violent repression by the French army against Cameroonian nationalists. During the first phase of this conflict, whose brutality was most evident in the Bassa country, in southern Cameroon’s cocoa-growing region, the Nkoemvone experimental station became a tool for winning back minds.
André Boyer, a journalist and head of the French administration’s propaganda service in the country, distributed in 1958 a film titled “The Cocoa Centre of Nkoemvone” to the populations. It was part of a general repertoire of techniques aimed, in his own words, “at bringing back the strayed to normal life and convincing the masses of the truly nationalist and sincere action of the Cameroonian government.”
The experimental station also served the French colonial administration to showcase its benefits in Cameroon. Evidence of this is the 1958 Report of the United Nations Visiting Mission to Trust Territories in West Africa on Cameroon under French administration. The writers and observers sent by the United Nations inspected the station on 19 November 1958 and stated: “(…) The activities of this station consist essentially of selecting the best cocoa varieties and producing cuttings for distribution to planters. It is hoped thus to replace in the plantations the current low-yielding trees with elite plants. The station has already given good results.”
This use of the station as a propaganda instrument was taken over at independence by the government of Cameroon’s first president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, this time in the service of international outreach. Thus, in the station’s report covering 1961–1962, we learn that the institution had received visits from the US ambassador to Cameroon, the German ambassador, and three African heads of state: Madagascar’s Philibert Tsiranana, Gabon’s Léon Mba, and Chad’s François Tombalbaye. Also came the director of the École nationale d’administration in Paris and the World Bank director for Africa, among others. However, this international outreach at the service of the Cameroonian government also marked the beginning of a gradual decline.
French oversight lasted until 1975
After the 1960 independence, the new states, including Cameroon, signed conventions with France providing “for applied research, an agreement on programmes, mixed financing for operations, a quasi-commitment from France for investment financing, and within this general framework, the establishment of special conventions specifying the modalities for setting up and managing the specialised institutes whose presence was deemed necessary.”
These agreements allowed France to continue administering the station, for example through the appointment of former colonial agronomists like Jacques Liabeuf as station director. As Jean Gaillard, Hocine Khelfaoui, and Jean Nya Ngatchou noted in a 2000 text, the new Cameroonian state saw its interest in this, being able to concentrate its resources on higher education and training while leaving scientific research in France’s hands. French oversight only ended in 1975.
In the following decades, the station entered a period of decline, worsened by the economic and social crisis of the 1980s, which severely affected Cameroonian agronomic research, which “experienced a serious financial situation and a change in the structure of its budget,” leading to a stagnation of research within it.
Extractivist ambitions that became an obstacle
The crisis affecting Cameroonian agricultural research extended to the country’s entire scientific research. During its most acute phase, from 1990 to 1996, “research programmes funded nationally were stopped; only programmes and projects benefiting from external financial contributions continued more or less normally, due to delays in paying staff salaries.” This led to reduced funding, researcher discouragement linked to salary devaluation, and abandonment of many programmes, including those on cocoa at the Nkoemvone station, where scientific activity almost halted.
At the turn of the 1990s, the station was transformed into a multipurpose agronomic research station, placed under the authority of the Institute of Agricultural Research for Development (IRAD), created by presidential decree in 1996 and reorganised in 2002. This restructuring did not improve the institution’s situation, which continued to decay. To the gradual deterioration caused by the economic crisis were added natural causes, worsening the state of dilapidation of the Nkoemvone station. On 17 March 2006, an article titled “Will the Nkoemvone station rise again?” revealed that a violent storm had, a few days earlier, destroyed plant trial areas, damaged the administrative block, and ravaged many homes. Since then, the situation has not improved.
Paradoxically, the very size of the site, inherited from the station’s extractivist ambitions as a place for producing knowledge about cocoa and transforming the environment, now constitutes an obstacle to its rehabilitation due to lack of sufficient funds. This relative state of abandonment cannot be explained solely by the state’s disengagement, justified by successive crises and natural hazards. It also reveals more deeply the contradictions of a colonial modernity project whose excessive ambitions and extractivist imaginaries collide with the far more complex realities of the postcolonial period.
