Economy
The economy of the province is highly rooted in agriculture. According to some estimates, more than 80% of the rural population depends solely on agriculture, including a strong livestock sub-sector. Food crops include rice (planted mostly in the Ndop Plain), potatoes (found in the Bui Division and Santa in Mezam Division), and beans (from most of the province). Maize, beans, potatoes, plantains, cocoyams, cassava and yams are the main food staples for the region. Cocoyams is used for making Achu, a staple for the Ngemba people and a widely consumed delicacy across the country. A lot of groundnuts is produced in the North-West, most of it from Esimbi. The province is also a major palm wine producer with one of its towns Batibo being the palm wine capital for Cameroon. The wine produced from Batibo though distributed across the country on a daily basis, still lacks the infrastructure and technology to produce on an industrial scale.
Industry plays a very small role in the economy of the North-West province, in terms of both the number of industries and the number of people employed. Except for soap production, the rest are agricultural processing businesses. Local crafts also flourish in some parts of the province with the production of various works of arts from wood, some weaving, and pottery. Fabrication of agricultural tools was once a booming sector but is now less significant.
Read more about this topic: Northwest Region (Cameroon)
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Everyone is always in favour of general economy and particular expenditure.”
—Anthony, Sir Eden (1897–1977)
“Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)