Cameroon

The Informal Alliance Against the Expansion of Industrial Oil Palm Plantations in West and Central Africa released a declaration to keep breaking the silence of the many abuses around industrial plantations and to reaffirm their strong commitment to resist their expansion in the defence of their territories and lives.

Communities in West and Central Africa are facing the impacts of industrial oil palm plantations. With the false promise of bringing ‘development’, corporations, backed up with government support, have been granted millions of hectares of land for this expansion.

Patriarchal oppression is inseparable from the industrial plantation model, and it is at the base of how companies generate profits. Companies target women, including due to their fundamental role in community life.

The video “NO to violence against women and girls living in and around oil palm plantations” denounces the violence against women in West and Central Africa whose lands have been invaded by industrial oil palm plantations.

Why haven't Africa's post-colonial governments dismantled the colonial plantation model of exploitation and extraction, returned the lands to their people and emboldened a resurgence of Africa's diverse, local food and farming systems?

Indigenous peoples in Cameroon are not only seeing their lands threatened due to strong pressure from corporate and state investors, but they also face a discriminatory justice system that blames and criminalizes them.

A new report on the state of industrial oil palm plantations in Africa shows how communities are turning the tide on a massive land grab in the region.

The booklet “Promise, Divide, Intimidate and Coerce: 12 tactics palm oil companies use to grab community land” aims to support communities who want to strengthen their resistance and better prepare themselves to stop corporations from establishing on their lands.

Despite the many profound damages that industries cause in the world's forests, they also cause something else to emerge: the strong and diverse resistance movements of affected communities defending their territories, livelihoods, cultures and even their existence. The struggle continues! (Available in Swahili).

An interview with the activist Nasako Besingi. He organized communities in their protests against US agribusiness Herakles Farm’s palm oil plantations. Due to this engagement, he has been the victim of Herakles Farm and government physical attacks, intimidation and criminalization. (Available in Swahili).

Only available in French.

The Société Financière des Caoutchouc (Socfin) group is one of the world’s biggest plantation companies. In Cameroon, a bitter land rights struggle has unfolded between villagers and Socfin’s local subsidiary Socapalm, which owns six palm oil concessions in the country. In this Fern report and photo story women give testimony on the impacts that the Socapalm plantations have over their territories and lives, how the company has expanded its plantations onto community land, polluted the environment, and prevented villagers from processing their own palm oil.