Comités de développement et gestion du développement local : une étude de cas à partir des communes de Doumé et d’Atok

Abstract

In Cameroon, development committees are set up to address community needs and promote local development, but they face difficulties that undermine their actions. Our study focuses on Development committees and local development management: A study based on the development committees of Doumé and Atok. The problem of this work is the role of the development committees in promoting local development in the councils of Doumé and Atok. From this problem, a central question and three secondary questions arise. The central question is: What are the explanatory factors for the slow take-off of local development implemented by the development committees in the councils of Doumé and Atok? The central hypothesis of this dissertation is the following: The explanatory factors for the slow take-off of local development driven by the development committees are both internal and external. The main objective is the following: To understand and explain the explanatory factors of the weak take-off of local development driven by the development committees in the councils of Doumé and Atok. As a theory, we had recourse to the strategic analysis of Michel Crozier and the constructivist structuralism of Pierre Bourdieu. These theories have helped to understand development committees as a space of struggle and a concrete system of action in which development actors and development committees exploit the areas of uncertainty that present themselves to satisfy their selfish interests to the detriment of collective interests. Also, to shed light on the interactions implemented by the committees around local development and the way they manage development actions, interviews were the means of data collecting in the field. At the end of this analysis, we came to the following results: the different relationships between development actors are conflicting ones, based on the search for individual interests and power struggles that influence local development actions.