Through it female farmers will migrate from subsistence to viable commercial agriculture.

Sponsored by the European Union (EU), at least 35,000 Cameroonian rural women are expected, in seven months, to be sensitized on food cooperative management and the workings of Administrative and Commercial Law Courts.

The project was kick-started in Buea, capital of the South West Region, recently, under the chairmanship of the Regional Governor’s representative and Inspector General of Services, Haman Dairou, accompanied by the European Union (EU) expert on access to Justice, Anne Lhuillier.

 On the occasion, the Governor’s representative appreciated the project as timely urging that his office be fed progressively with field reports of the venture. He praised the European Union for the interest taken to ensure education of Cameroonians on Administrative Law procedures after a recent Decree created Administrative Courts in the ten Regions of Cameroon. The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Foundation-Cameroon (LUKMEF), implementing the project styled as “moving communities and changing lives”, set its objective to help women access Administrative and Commercial Justice through the creation of food cooperatives in replacement of common initiative groups (CIGs) that functioned in the past with limited business success.

Their spokesperson, Christian Tanyi, explained that 51 per cent of Cameroon is women, 80 per cent of whom live in rural areas with a livelihood based on farming. Furthermore, if women are empowered economically and legally, it would make a huge difference in family welfare as a nucleus of society and enhance national cohesion, Mr. Tanyi underscored. He said the EU has contributed some 34,000 Euros to sustain the project as such leaving their indelible footprint in Cameroon.

In the process of legalizing women cooperatives enabling them move from subsistence to business farming, some five pro bono (free) legal clinics in the North West and South West Regions were identified to assist female business operators seeking their rights in administrative justice. The project promises to legalize 40 women cooperatives, five of which will operate revolving funds. Over 50 women of the civil society attended the project launch in Buea visibly aroused by the scheme.