Atlas of towns and villages in Cameroon

PREFACE by Eméran ATANGANA ETEME

The village is the basic unit of social life, the major point of attachment for everyone. It is the first political family of man. It predates the constitution of the state. The city is only the supreme level of development of the village. Networking the data of the villages and towns of the country in a work is to sublimate the national economy which rises from an unconscious economy into a conscious economy; it is to leave the economic Jordanism prior to a just economy. A State like Cameroon does not contain a people, but two hundred who differ in the conception of life, of death, in the way and the time of organizing the funeral, in the system of kinship. It goes without saying that under these conditions, the attitude to adopt in the face of a phenomenon depends on the locality. Knowing the data or the local constraint before a trip facilitates the progress of the trip. Knowing the arrangement of things in a locality to be visited helps to minimize uncertainty. This is what I call the fair economy, free from wastage. The construction of objectives is done through knowledge of expectations, which result from a number of indicators showing signs of lack. From these indicators, we can formulate objectives. If the indicator is the asphalt road, the objective is to have asphalt roads everywhere. If the indicator is the number of villages served with electricity or telephone, the objective is local development. In any case, the indicators are only the expression or the symptom of the objectives.