- Industrial and export agriculture contracted 3.1% in 2025 after 9.5% growth a year earlier.
- Agriculture still generated CFA3.97 trillion in value added, about 11.5% of Cameroon’s nominal GDP.
- Agricultural export earnings rose 8.8% despite the decline in production activity, as prices for several major crops increased.
Cameroon’s agricultural growth slowed sharply to 1.1% in 2025 from 5.2% a year earlier, after a contraction in industrial and export farming erased much of the sector’s previous momentum. The slowdown matters for a sector that generated nearly CFA4 trillion in value added and accounted for about 11.5% of the country’s nominal GDP.
According to the National Institute of Statistics’ (INS) 2025 National Accounts, dated August 2026, industrial and export agriculture contracted 3.1%, after 9.5% growth in 2024. Food-crop agriculture, by contrast, grew 3.7%, up from 3.2% the previous year.
The reversal was particularly sharp for industrial and export agriculture, whose growth rate deteriorated by 12.6 percentage points between 2024 and 2025. The INS report does not specify which industries — cocoa, coffee, cotton, bananas, rubber or others — accounted for the contraction.
The agricultural slowdown weighed on the broader primary sector, which grew just 1.8% in 2025, compared with 3.6% in 2024. Its contribution to GDP growth was cut in half, from 0.6 percentage points to 0.3 points. Livestock nevertheless grew 3.8%, while fishing and aquaculture expanded 4.8%.
Nearly CFA4 Trillion in Value Added
Despite weak growth in real terms, agriculture remains a major part of Cameroon’s economy. At current prices, the sector generated CFA3.97 trillion in value added in 2025, up from CFA3.56 trillion in 2024. That represented about 11.5% of the country’s CFA34.47 trillion nominal GDP for the year.
Agriculture’s value added was also nearly twice the CFA2.09 trillion generated by the category the INS classifies as “other manufacturing industries,” excluding food processing. The contraction in industrial and export agriculture came even as the value of agricultural exports continued to rise. Export earnings from agricultural products reached CFA1.20 trillion in 2025, up 8.8% from CFA1.10 trillion in 2024. Agricultural products therefore generated more export revenue than energy products, whose exports fell to CFA1.14 trillion.
The two trends are not contradictory. The 3.1% contraction measures the change in the volume of activity in industrial and export agriculture, while the CFA1.20 trillion figure measures the value of agricultural products sold abroad. Export values can change not only because of volumes but also because of prices and the composition of exports.
International prices for Cameroon’s main agricultural commodities moved in different directions in 2025. According to World Bank data cited by the INS, cocoa prices rose another 6.4% after a 123.4% surge in 2024. Robusta coffee gained 10.1%, arabica 50.6% and bananas 4%. Rubber prices increased just 0.9%, while cotton fell 10.7%.
Food Processing Continues to Grow
The agricultural slowdown also contrasted with the performance of the processing industry. Food-processing industries grew 3.6% in 2025 after 4.2% in 2024, while other manufacturing industries expanded 4.4%.
That divergence alone, however, does not establish that processors faced shortages of agricultural raw materials. The 2025 National Accounts provide neither a detailed breakdown of each crop’s contribution to the contraction in industrial and export agriculture nor data that directly link the decline to supplies for food-processing industries.
The INS figures support a narrower conclusion: industrial and export agriculture, which had provided strong support to agricultural growth in 2024, contracted in 2025, while food-crop agriculture continued to expand. That reversal explains most of the drop in overall agricultural growth from 5.2% to just 1.1% in one year.
Amina Malloum