The Missing Ingredient: How Health and Education Impact Cameroon’s Industrial Future

Stéphane Mbiankeu Nguea., Iskandar Patrick Abadoma Mounpou

Executive Summary

The output of manufacturing industries is not determined by investment and geographical factors, but also by human health status. Diseases and malnutrition can adversely affect manufacturing activities, as malaria, malnutrition, and family care responsibilities hinder the performance of professional employees. According to Cameroon’s Human Capital Index, a child born today will only achieve 39% of their maximum adult productivity; adjusted for labour efficiency, this equals 28%. Poor health and nutrition contribute significantly to this low level. More than 31% of Cameroonian children under 5 years old suffer from stunting, which affects their cognitive functions and earning capacity. In addition, treatable illnesses such as malaria, diarrhoea, and respiratory infections interfere with studying and working. At the same time, industrialization policy considers human capital solely through the prism of educational attainment. Human health is an essential productive resource, equally important to electricity and transportation, as well as a crucial component of the production process. Without a healthy labour force, investments in schools and vocational training programs will not bring significant results. Cameroon’s Education and Training Sector Strategy for 2023-2030, although important, will not be successful without a strategic approach to the improvement of the physical and psychological well-being of both existing and future labourers.

Key Messages

Human capital is not an auxiliary factor in terms of industrialization; it is a basic requirement, and health forms its basis. A weakened labour force unable to cope with health issues and malnutrition will not ensure adequate productivity growth.

Cameroon’s education and employment disparity problem is quite serious, but it becomes even more complicated because of an unseen crisis of poor health negatively affecting cognitive abilities, educational achievements, and performance at work.

Investments in healthcare and nutrition services must be recognized as essential elements of industrial policies. Without addressing health problems, improvements in curricula, education quality, and teaching methodologies will hardly be effective due to children’s poor physical health and labourers’ poor psychological state.

A demographic opportunity is rare since the country’s population consists of more than 60 percent of people under 25 years old. Cameroon can benefit from this demographic dividend, but only when people are healthy and educated. Otherwise, ignoring this aspect may turn a promising opportunity into a demographic threat. 

Introduction

Cameroon’s National Development Strategy 2020–2030 (SND30) sets ambitious manufacturing, infrastructure, and employment goals, but implicitly assumes a healthy, capable workforce will be available to drive them. Health deficits are structural barriers to industrial competitiveness, not marginal issues. Childhood stunting reduces adult physical capacity and cuts cognitive scores by up to one standard deviation. Malaria drives high outpatient visits and lost workdays, directly lowering labour supply and productivity. Sick workers slow production lines; sick children pull parents, especially mothers, from jobs. These impacts are as critical as poor roads or unreliable power. This brief has three objectives. First, it diagnoses Cameroon’s human capital, focusing on health deficits that curb industrial productivity. Second, it shows how weak health and education together form a binding constraint on industrial transformation, drawing on household surveys, firm data, and global evidence. Third, it proposes a realistic, sequenced set of recommendations to embed health and education investments into the core of Cameroon’s industrial strategy.

Diagnosis: The Human Capital Gap in Full View

Health: The Burden That Compounds Every Other Deficit

Cameroon’s HCI of 0.39 conceals stark regional disparities, with scores as low as 0.31 in the East and North‑West regions, driven in part by poorer health outcomes. The probability that a child will survive to age five, one of the HCI components, is directly impacted by infectious diseases, malnutrition, and weak primary healthcare. Childhood stunting, affecting 31.7 per cent of children under five nationally and far higher rates in the famine‑prone Far North, locks in a lifetime productivity penalty. A stunted child will, on average, earn 22 per cent less as an adult than a well‑nourished peer, even with equal education. The consequences extend well beyond childhood. Adult illness—from malaria, HIV, tuberculosis, and increasingly non‑communicable diseases—reduces the effective labour supply. A study estimated that a 10 percent improvement in life expectancy can boost annual economic growth by 0.3 to 0.4 percentage points, precisely because healthier workers are more productive, save more, and invest more in their own education. Cameroon’s total health expenditure remains low, at roughly 4.6 per cent of GDP, with out‑of‑pocket payments pushing many households into poverty when illness strikes. Those catastrophic health expenditures crowd out spending on education and nutrition, creating a vicious cycle in which poor health begets low skills and low incomes.

The Education‑Employment Mismatch

Besides this, there is still the ever-present skills gap to contend with. In 2022, close to 15,000 graduates entered the workforce, but 70 percent of the youth in Cameroon find themselves unemployed, not because no opportunities exist, but because the new graduates lack the skills to do the job. While there are numerous programmes in the humanities and social sciences because they are easy to implement and are relatively inexpensive, the same has not been done for technical and scientific subjects. Technical training programs continue to lack funding while at the same time being viewed as the fallback for academic failures. There always seem to be complaints from employers that newly employed workers are not ready for work straight away. There also seem to be very few coordinating structures between technical schools and industry. There are other ways in which poor health impacts the issue of education. A teenage girl, unable to attend school because of painful menstruation with inadequate water and sanitation facilities, ends up lagging behind until she drops out of school completely. A male teenager, having suffered numerous episodes of malaria during childhood, finds himself attending high school with a compromised brain, leading to an inability to acquire technical skills.

The STEM gender gap and the health nexus

Across Sub‑Saharan Africa, girls account for only 21 percent of STEM students. In Cameroon, early marriage, teenage pregnancy, and insufficient reproductive health services have led tens of thousands of girls to drop out of school before reaching technical fields. The prevalence of anaemia, which is found in over 40 per cent of women of reproductive age in the country, minimizes energy and concentration—two critical aspects in carrying out demanding studies. Closing the gender gap in industrial employment, therefore, requires scholarships and mentorships to improve the condition of girls and women in health with regard to family planning, iron supplementation, and safe water and sanitation in schools.

Opportunities: what a healthy and skilled workforce can unlock

the demographic dividend

Beyond the constraints identified, a healthier and better‑trained workforce presents significant opportunities for industrial transformation. Cameroon stands on the cusp of the demographic transition, with more than 60 per cent of its population under 25 years old. Whether that contributes to a dividend or a disaster depends on the level of youth productivity. A healthy, well-educated young person may drive the country’s manufacturing sector, found a technology start-up, or modernize a family farm. In contrast, a sick and malnourished young person will hardly be assured of gainful employment, especially if he or she has received schooling. The 2023–2030 Education and Training Sector Strategy rightly stresses the skills-building aspect, but it assumes an able-bodied and responsive child entering the system.

From Low‑Wage to High‑Value Production

Moving up the industrial value chain, from exporting raw cocoa to making chocolate or from assembling imported parts to locally producing them, requires a skilled, healthy workforce. Operating CNC machines, maintaining electrical systems, and managing complex supply chains require concentrated attention, fine motor control, and problem-solving skills. Chronic illness, under-nutrition, and fatigue undermine all three. The most productive companies invest in employees’ well-being. In turn, factory-level programs in Ethiopia have been shown to reduce absenteeism by up to 30% through simple health service and nutrition programs. Cameroon could follow competitive emerging models in the industrial zones of Kribi and Douala, where healthy workers serve as a key competitive advantage.

Recommendations

Short Term (1–2 Years)

Aligning curricula with health. In this regard, the ministries concerned should conduct annual employer surveys to update programs and include in technical training the basic health literacy and occupational safety modules. Every vocational student should graduate with the ability to prevent workplace injuries, understand the symptoms of common diseases, and practice personal health maintenance.

Nationally, school-based nutrition and deworming programs can start. The following can be carried out with the support of the World Food Programme and UNICEF: Supplement iron and folate among adolescent girls; deworm periodically; provide micronutrient-fortified foods when feasible in primary and secondary schools. This greatly helps reverse malnutrition that has been erasing cognitive gains from schooling.

Medium-Term (3–5 Years)

The Education and Training Sector Strategy should be operationalised with a clear health dimension. The strategy’s oversight Unit will need to take on health indicators-attendance, anaemia, and teenage pregnancy-as among its key performance metrics, with the national health strategy likewise needing to incorporate education-sensitive goals.

Integrate workplace wellness services within the zoned industrial estates. In such a manner, in Kribi, Douala, and future industrial parks, every enterprise above a certain size will either provide or participate in a pooled occupational health centre that provides preventive care, testing and treatment for malaria, and nutrition support for workers and their families.

Long Term (5–10 Years)

Establish a National Skills and Health Observatory. The observatory would track not only labour market trends and skill shortages but also workforce health indicators—absenteeism, occupational disease prevalence, and stunting trends—to provide an integrated picture of human capital.

Create a Human Capital Development Fund with a dedicated health window. Financed by a small levy on industrial zone operations and matched by the national budget, the fund would finance continuous training, TVET equipment, and—critically—subsidized health insurance coverage for industrial workers. Linking health insurance to the workplace would improve health outcomes while reducing the out‑of‑pocket expenses that trap families in poverty.

Conclusion

Cameroon’s industrial investments in infrastructure will underperform without a healthy, capable workforce. A child born today will achieve less than 40% of her potential, 70% of youth lack formal work, and millions of girls exit school without technical skills. These are linked failures from treating health and education as separate, not as two sides of human capital. Countries like Singapore and Costa Rica industrialized by recognizing that healthy workers learn faster, work longer, and innovate more. Cameroon’s 2023–2030 Education and Training Sector Strategy alone is insufficient. Success requires an integrated human capital strategy: pairing every education reform with health investment, and tying industrial incentives to worker well-being. The key constraint is not funding but political will to make health the foundation of industrial policy. Without it, factories and ports will not deliver expected returns.