CDC Company Towns in Cameroon: A Case of Shaping Built Space to Articulate Power and Social Control in Colonial and Postcolonial Perspectives

The article analyzes company towns with particular emphasis on the workers' camps of the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) in Cameroon. The avowed purpose of the camps from their inception during the colonial era has always been to meet the housing needs of workers. However, the article contends that the camps were designed to accomplish two principal, albeit unstated, objectives, namely, 1) to articulate power and maintain social order in built space; and 2) to transmit Eurocentric ideals of work and general conduct to the workers. Company towns are not only of historical value, they are also of contemporary importance as they remain conspicuous features of built space in Cameroon in particular and Africa in general.