- Cameroonian villagers protesting on March 25 against plantation company Socapalm’s replanting of oil palm trees on disputed land were dispersed with tear gas by local law enforcement.
- Socapalm rejects the villagers’ claim that the company was supposed to return this land following an amendment to its lease, explaining that this part of the plantation is not leased.
- Gendarmes escorted Socapalm workers despite a local official’s previous statement that replanting required an agreement with villagers.
- Socfin, Socapalm’s parent company, has been accused of land grabbing and human rights abuses, with investigators confirming many community grievances at its Cameroon plantations.
Villagers in Cameroon have denounced the use of tear gas by authorities to break up their protest on March 25 against the replanting of oil palm trees by the plantation company Socapalm on disputed land in the country’s southwest. Residents of the village of Apouh à Ngog say the land should have been returned to them, and that 6,000 young banana trees they had planted to assert their claim have now been uprooted.
Félicité Ngo Bissou, president of the Association of Women Residents of Socapalm- Édéa (known by its French acronym, AFRISE), accused Socapalm’s Luxembourg-based owner, Socfin, of “using a strategy of intimidation and beatings to prevent us from accessing our lands.”
“That’s why they came armed to the teeth, uprooted all the bananas, and are planting oil palm trees everywhere,” she told Mongabay by telephone on Apr. 3.
Apouh à Ngog is is one of several villages at the center of a long-standing land conflict between residents of the Édéa commune and Socapalm. Villagers say that since the plantation was established in 1969, the company’s activities have steadily encroached upon their ancestral lands, leaving them with little space for farming, housing, or burials. In the case of Apouh, villagers say Socapalm has occupied almost all of their land.
Ngo Bissou told Mongabay that the piece of land where Socapalm has planted new oil palms is part of 3,712 hectares (9,173 acres) that the company is contractually bound to return to the villagers under a clause in the 2000 lease agreement.
In response to questions from Mongabay, a Socfin spokesperson rejected this, saying the contested land near Apouh was acquired outright when the company bought an older plantation in 2010, and it is not covered by any amendments to Socapalm’s lease agreements. He also said no dispute over the parcel of land re-planted in March was raised until 2023 and that the company is no longer operating on land it has been given up in other parts of the Édéa plantation, and that communities should approach the government to regain access to those areas.
In an interview recorded by a local journalist, Apouh resident Janvier Etamane said Édéa’s subprefect, Hector Fame, the district’s highest-ranking official, had instructed that Socapalm and local residents must reach an agreement before the company could begin replanting. “Suddenly, we saw countless armed soldiers wearing bulletproof vests surrounding the Socapalm workers as they replanted — that’s when we, the villagers, rose up,” Etamane said.
Footage from Socapalm’s operation filmed by Ngo Bissou shows the use of tear gas by the national gendarmerie to disperse protesters.
“The gendarmes on March 25th 2025 were present to prevent trespassing and allow our teams to proceed with replanting the area (this is not an extension),” a Socfin spokesperson wrote. The replanting went as planned, he said, “with no notable incident”.
The company’s spokesperson also denied that company workers had pulled up the villagers’ young banana plants. “They were not uprooted. However, we simply continued our replanting work in the designated area, where plots had been cleared in 2024 but had not yet been replanted. At the start of the work, these young plants were no longer visible, as they had been completely covered by the ground cover plant used as part of our program.”
Reached by phone, Édéa subprefect Fame told Mongabay: “If you want to know who mobilized the police, contact Socapalm. I wasn’t the one who mobilized the law enforcement officers.”
In the aftermath of the protest over the replanting, AFRISE and 50 other local and international organizations wrote an open letter to the senior official in the Sanaga Maritime region, where the plantation is located, demanding that the authorities halt Socapalm’s activity and investigate the incident.
Socfin has been accused of land grabbing, human rights abuses, and sexual violence in many of the countries where it operates. The company commissioned sustainability consultancy the Earthworm Foundation to investigate community grievances in Cameroon, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cambodia in 2023. The consultancy has confirmed many of the allegations.
Its report on Socapalm, published in February, substantiated allegations of sexual harassment at the Édéa plantation, and said that communities have not regained access to leased land the company had agreed to return to the state in 2020.
In response, Socapalm published an action plan committing itself to gathering community grievances over land, to continuing negotiations with local communities, and to ensuring compliance with plantation boundaries that are currently being re-surveyed by the Cameroon’s land ministry, MINDCAF.
Ngo Bissou said villagers have remained at the disputed site while the company continues its replanting exercise accompanied by gendarmes.
CORRECTION: This article was updated on Apr. 14, 2025, to clarify that the contested land near Apouh is not, in fact, part of land retroceded by Socapalm, and to remove a reference to the presence of private security at the scene on Mar. 25. Mongabay regrets the errors.
Banner image: Villagers protesting the re-planting of oil palms on Socapalm’s plantation at Édéa. Image courtesy Félicité Ngo Bissou/AFRISE.
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