As hunger, desperation lingers: Women protest SOCAPALM’s replantation campaign, demand more farmland space.

Madam Missinga is sitting in front of her mud hut looking mislaid and bewildered over what future awaits her children and grandchildren. She wonders if her family will be able to eat in the coming days and weeks.

Madame Missinga is from the Dehane village, in Edea, Upper Sanaga division of the Littoral region. Her village is surrounded by palm trees of the agro-industrial palm oil production company, SOCAPALM. 

The company was created in 1969 and established in the Edea area since the early 2000s with vast land surface spread across several thousands of hectares. The industrial giant has engaged in an expansion project heavily limiting vital living space for surrounding communities.

Like Madam Missinga, other households in the Dehane village have common concerns for availability of farmlands shrinking their capabilities to cultivate crops to feed their families or sell to generate incomes to sustain their families.

After reflecting on their current hardship and the uncertainty about her children's future, she rushes into her house and comes out dressed in her black Kaba and red head scarf ready to take her destiny and that of her family into her hands.

The mother of nine children and 14 grandchildren just remembered about an announced strike action against the SOCAPALM replanting exercise. 

This is the umptieth time that the women-centre group called Association of Women Living Near Socapalm in Edea, known by its French acronym as AFRISE, whose mission is to defend the interests of the surrounding communities, is initiating a peaceful protest. However, madam Missinga and her peers of Dehane are, for the first time, joining three other neighbouring villages; Apouh, Ongue and Koukoue, to protest.

They have to walk over a distance of about 20km to a distance zone called Dibongo, left for the communities to farm on. 

To beat the crushing sun, the women have to get on a bike to transport them. The bike riders carry two each, others three against a 6,000frs transportation costs.

Despite this accruing cost, they women are determined to make their voices heard and heard by the government in Yaounde. They do this by carrying placards bearing messages of their disdain and protesting on the farming zone where SOCAPALM’s replantation continue to extend in recently. 

“Not only are they taking over our ancestral lands, they are expanding or replanting palm trees everywhere without leaving us a small space of land to even plant cassava to survive for our families,” the woman from Dehane village says. 

She insists that the replant campaign not only ruin their chances of survival, but also plunges the villages into endless poverty.

Company brings development but survival inalienable

Another protester, Mikangue Marie-Claire, is from the Apouh village. She says they are not protesting against the existence of the SOCAPALM company, as that would mean they are rejecting the development of their communities which SOCAPALM brings as many Cameroonians from various part of the country come in search of jobs and other opportunities.

The villager of Apouh explained that they communities can cohabite with SOCAPALM but not at the expense of the survival.

“Their arrival is already a good thing because it brings development and a lot of people to the surrounding area, but leaving us to starve, what do they want the young people to become?” she wonders.  

The mother of eight with over dozens of grandkids reiterates the need for the agro-industrial giant to retrocede living space for the villages to enable them to cultivate and feed their families.

“It is part of development, but that does not mean they have to take everything from us so that we do not even have a living space. So today, we say ‘yes’ to the return of our land and ‘no’ to replanting. They have taken enough land. Let them leave us a little so that we too can use it to feed our families,” she pleaded while tears ran down her cheeks. 

“Is it normal in Africa for a rural woman to live without her farmland or her plantation? It is thanks to the farms that women can support their families. What if we don't have a plantation?” she voices her concerns. 

Madam Mikangue avows that not making lands available to youth of the concerned communities, is against the directives of the President of the Republic who placed women and youth at the heart of his current seventh term while taking the oath of office in November 2025.

She also believes that the accrue hardship may push especially the youth into defiance activities like banditry, prostitution and other social ills.

Stark reality of population rights trampled on 

Media professionals on the way to investigate the supposed expansion of the palm replantation activity, are denied at the first control post by the SOCAPALM security personnel. After prolong persuasion lasting almost half a hour, the journalists a granted entry into the plantation zone.

After traveling over 15km into the area, the team of investigative journalists are shocked to meet another team of SOCAPALM security accompanied by an armed soldier who blocked the passage with the use of a vehicle. The journalists are denied access to the   area protested by the rural women and ordered the media team out of the zone.

According to AFRISE President, Félicité Hortense Ngon Bissou, the incident is a stark reality of what the communities go through on a daily basis as their movement and activities are severely gaged by the SOCAPALM security team.

“You saw how we don't even have easy access, nor easy exits even go to these fields. We are monitored too closely, even to go and cultivate our farms or neighbouring spaces,” the AFRISE president says pointing to the SOCAPALM security team blocking the access way.

She says their efforts made to engage state authorities and the company for vital space around to habitations to enable them farm on and save them from the stress of farming in parcels of land located over 20 to 25km from their home. 

She says this has left them with no option that to incur the high costs and risks involved with leaving their children alone at home. 

She says due to the high transportation fair, they are compelled to spend days in their farms to cultivate and with no proper supervision of the children left to themselves back at home. 

“It's more than 20kilometres to get to Dibongo and work there. I can't go there every day because I don't have enough money” Ngon Bissou explains. 

The recent replantation campaign began in 2023 and continued till date. These replantations have often been met with protest. But the protests are often counteracted with intimidation and arrest. 

It is event reported that during one of such protest, the Chief of Apouh village, His Majesty Ditope Lindoume was arrested and detained for several days by state security forces. 

“These replanting operations began in 2023 and continue to this day. We are calling on the Cameroonian state to review and look at our problems with living space here in the village of Apouh,” she says. 

SOCAPALM denies claims

An official statement issued by SOCAPALM on the latest protest, claimed the protesting women did not issue any official notification of their action.

The company claims the replanting simply involves “rejuvenating the plantation on land that has already been exploited and does not constitute an extension under any circumstances”. 

It also says that since 2023, they have engaged awareness-raising efforts and communications with the administrative authorities on the implementation of the replanting programme, including tripartite meetings organised in connection with protests by the population.

Regarding land ownership issues, it claims that as part of a process of demarcating and densifying boundaries engaged with authorities since 2005, more than 2,566 hectares has been returned to the State out of an initial concession of 11,210 hectares, and the corresponding lease amendment signed.