La coopération décentralisée entre les communes de Mengueme au Cameroun et de Stains en France 2000-2022

Abstract

Several Cameroonian and French municipalities are involved in decentralized cooperation. Following an observation of the technological deprivation of Mengueme in 1999 despite its development potential, the local authorities of Stains and Mengueme municipalities undertook to cooperate to remedy this situation from the year 2000. This is why this study entitled “Decentralized international cooperation between the municipalities of Mengueme (Cameroon) and Stains (France) from 2000 to 2022” therefore examines an example of this cooperation with the main ambition of taking stock of decentralized cooperation between the two municipalities from 2000 to 2022. Given that municipalities are non-state actors pursuing as a priority the direct interests of the population, the mobilization of transnationalist theory and liberalism has made it possible to better understand the room for maneuver of municipalities to contribute to the socio-economic development. Thanks to a qualitative methodological approach critically treating a documentary corpus composed of written sources (books, municipal archives, official texts, academic works), oral sources and iconographic and digital documents, it appears that the decentralized cooperation between Stains and Mengueme is an unbalanced or unequal partnership, or even an action of assistance from the first to the second which requires an urgent reorientation in the direction of transparency in the management of the resources mobilized and the balance of exchanges. It was favored by the context of globalization and the policy of decentralization and disengagement by the French and Cameroonian states. Led mainly by institutional actors in a complex legal framework, it materialized from 2000 to 2022 by strengthening the capacities of municipal executives, the development of socio-economic infrastructures, the preservation of ecosystems and the joint organization of cultural events.