Cameroon’s Nkoemvone cocoa station: a colonial relic facing decline

Deep in southern Cameroon, the Nkoemvone site stretches over more than 300 hectares, of which only ten are cultivated. A paved road cuts through the area, lined with dilapidated buildings and a sign identifying it as the “Nkoemvone multipurpose agricultural station,” overseen by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. Though the structures are badly worn, the station remains operational, primarily focused on multiplying and distributing cocoa plants for agronomic research.

Founded in 1944, this site stands as a major remnant of colonial modernity. The Nkoemvone Experimental Cocoa Station exemplifies what historian Hélène Blais calls the “garden-object” within the French colonial empire, especially during the 20th century when plant reproduction became the dominant activity. Less documented than other colonial stations like Bambey in Senegal, it nonetheless played a role in moving, introducing, and relocating plant varieties — in this case, cocoa — with the goal of transforming colonized societies. Its history proved brief, and its ambitions collided with the challenges of independent Cameroon.

The 1929 economic and social crisis, though dulled in colonial Africa by metropolitan support, triggered a profound shift in French colonial policies. It ended the trade economy and pushed the colonial state to take charge of infrastructure and export crops, while also attending to the living conditions of colonized peoples. The colonial state thus became “developmentalist.” This shift solidified during the Brazzaville conference from January 30 to February 8, 1944, chaired by Charles de Gaulle, which aimed to revive the French economy and improve the lot of the colonized through planned development.

‘Popularizing high-yielding subjects’

On agriculture, a dominant narrative emerged: African societies were seen as essentially peasant, so improving their lot required boosting yields through massive investment in farming. This logic led to a proliferation of agronomic research institutions across the French empire, with Cameroon as a key observation ground. On June 8, 1944, Governor Eugène Paul Carras abolished the Technical Council for Agriculture and Livestock, replacing it with three separate services: Agriculture, Livestock, and Forestry.

This reorganization, more than mere administrative tweaking, aimed to give agriculture its own dedicated service. According to agronomist Pierre Barthe, former head of Cameroon’s agriculture service, in a 1946 report, the new service included several sub-departments, notably a priority one for agronomic research institutions. Among these were three experimental stations at Dschang, Maroua, and Nkoemvone. All were created during the interwar period except for the Nkoemvone cocoa station, founded in 1944 following the June 8 reforms. It is thus the quintessential product of the modernization of colonialism that emerged between the wars.

The Nkoemvone experimental cocoa station was set up gradually. According to agronomist Raymond Juliat, head of the agriculture service in 1944, it was not initially established by a formal text; its role was “selecting cocoa trees to popularize only high-yielding subjects.” In 1947, 300 hectares were requisitioned for the site, but construction stalled due to labor and material shortages and “the absence of an overall plan.” Despite these difficulties, the colonial administration confirmed its mission in 1948 to encompass all research and experimentation, and formally institutionalized it with a regulatory text the following year. Construction then began, funded by the cocoa fund.

Forced labor?

Setting up the Nkoemvone experimental station faced major practical hurdles. As station director Jean Braudeau noted in his 1949 annual report, a lack of staff prevented building, road construction, nursery creation, and 15 hectares of plantations. He managed to recruit temporary workers from a nearby village, often paid by task. Whether this labor was voluntary or forced remains unclear: though High Commissioner Renée Hoffherr began banning forced recruitment upon his arrival in 1947, Cameroonian historian Léon Kaptué notes that the French administration continued to mobilize forced labor until 1949.

To attract workers from beyond the region, the colonial administration built housing within the station, a common practice among colonial administrations, as historian Gwendolyn Wright points out. These workers were expected to help construct the station and participate in agronomic research.

Agronomist Achille Pacilly, who succeeded Braudeau as station head in 1949, revealed that a workers’ camp was first set up, consisting of twenty huts made from local materials. In 1956, fifty-eight permanent houses were built, housing 130 to 140 families a few years later. The workers’ camp thus solved the labor problem.

Alongside these dwellings, homes for supervisory staff were also erected, along with research laboratories, a potable water supply, electricity, an infirmary, and extensive facilities like nurseries and collection gardens of cocoa varieties. In sum, the station was a site where living and research spaces were closely intertwined. Development of the station was completed in 1959, on the eve of the country’s independence.

A tool of colonial propaganda

Beyond its scientific role, the Nkoemvone experimental station also served as an instrument of colonial propaganda for the French administration. This propaganda took place in the specific Cameroonian context of 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 region of southern Cameroon’s cocoa belt, the Nkoemvone station became a tool for winning hearts and minds.

André Boyer, a journalist and head of the propaganda service for the French administration in the country, distributed a film in 1958 titled “The Cocoa Center of Nkoemvone” to local populations. It was part of a general repertoire of techniques aimed, in his own words, at “bringing back the misguided to normal life and convincing the masses of the truly nationalist and sincere action of the Cameroonian government.”

The experimental station was also used by the French colonial administration to showcase its benefits in Cameroon. Evidence of this appears in the 1958 United Nations Visiting Mission Report on Trust Territories in West Africa regarding Cameroon under French administration. UN observers inspected the station on November 19, 1958, and stated: “The activities of this station consist essentially of selecting the best cocoa varieties and producing cuttings for distribution to planters. The hope is to replace the current low-yielding trees in plantations with elite plants. The station has already shown good results.”

This use of the station as a propaganda tool was later adopted by the government of Cameroon’s first president, Ahmadou Ahidjo, after independence, this time for international prestige. According to the station’s 1961-1962 annual report, it received visits from the U.S. 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 visiting were the director of the École nationale d’administration in Paris and the World Bank’s director for Africa, among others. However, this international exposure also marked the beginning of a gradual decline.

French oversight until 1975

After independence in 1960, new states, including Cameroon, signed agreements with France that provided for “applied research to include an agreement on programs, mixed funding for operations, a quasi-commitment from France for investment funding, and within this general framework, establishment of specific agreements specifying the modalities of setting up and managing specialized institutes whose presence would be deemed necessary.”

These agreements allowed France to continue administering the station, for example by appointing former colonial agronomists like Jacques Liabeuf as station director. As researchers Jean Gaillard, Hocine Khelfaoui, and Jean Nya Ngatchou noted in 2000, the new Cameroonian state found this arrangement beneficial, allowing it to concentrate resources on higher education and training while leaving scientific research to France. French oversight ended only in 1975.

In the following decades, the station entered a period of decline, exacerbated by the economic and social crisis of the 1980s, which heavily affected Cameroonian agronomic research. The sector “experienced a serious financial situation and a change in the structure of its budget,” according to the same authors, leading to stagnation of research within the station.

Extractivist ambitions become an obstacle

The crisis affecting Cameroonian agricultural research spread to the entire scientific sector. During its most acute phase from 1990 to 1996, “nationally funded research programs were halted; only programs and projects benefiting from external financial support continued more or less normally, due to delays in salary payments.” This led to reduced funding, demoralization among researchers from salary devaluation, and abandonment of many programs, including those on cocoa at the Nkoemvone station, where scientific activity nearly stopped.

Around the turn of the 1990s, the station was converted into a multipurpose agronomic research station, placed under the Institute of Agricultural Research for Development (IRAD), created by presidential decree in 1996 and reorganized in 2002. This restructuring did not improve the institution’s situation, which continued to deteriorate. In addition to the gradual decay caused by the economic crisis, natural factors added to the station’s dilapidation. On March 17, 2006, an article titled “Will the Nkoemvone Station Rise Again?” revealed that a violent storm days earlier had destroyed plant trial areas, damaged the administrative block, and ravaged many homes. Since then, conditions have not improved.

Paradoxically, the vast size of the site — inherited from the station’s extractivist ambitions as a place for cocoa knowledge production and environmental transformation — now hinders restoration efforts due to insufficient resources. This relative abandonment cannot be explained solely by state disengagement, justified by successive crises and natural disasters. It also reveals deeper contradictions of a colonial modernity project whose outsized ambitions and extractivist imaginaries clash with the far more complex realities of the postcolonial period.