Cameroon Governance and Security Sector Reform: An Autopsy of State Response to Emerging Security Problems in the Central Africa Sub Region

The problem in Africa, South of the Sahara was not only that countries with a
kind of thin or shoestring budget grappled to indebt themselves with loans to
build, train and equip their security sector but also that security was wholly
perceived to mean the protection of National Boarders and its resources, signing
of military accords and treaties thereby casting internal security away from
crucial concerns. The problems and contradictions imposed by this conundrum
of the parochial conception of Security architecture and operatives have
combined with an array of poor governance to beg for reform wherein state
governance and Human security must be seen as crucially interdependent. It is
with this preoccupation that the UN, EU, and AU have undertaken lasting
measures to reform the security sector placing human security and good
governance at the centrality of its hub. If this has been urgent in other areas of
the world, the need is crucially acute in the Central African Sub Region whose
member states have been encompassed not only by issues of fragile states borne
out of problematic governance as well as transnational crime, secessionists
claim and arm uprising as well as a transnational crime. This is the Nexus
underlying good governance and the Security Sector reform which is the
Substance of this study. From a thorough review of primary and secondary
sources, the study seeks to – provide the special context and circumstances
underlying Good governance and its connection to Security Sector Reform in the
Central African Sub Region- Bring out the cogent elements of good governance
and connect how this is crucial in the Security Sector Reform – Cast a Scientific
focus on Good governance within the Security Sector using key Central African
Region states and showcasing how this is important in state and peacebuilding
as offered by the UN and its corollaries.

Key words:  Security reform, good governance, autopsy, challenges