Incidental Benefits of Female Constituted Social Groups in Nso’Polity of the Cameroon Grasslands: Colonial and Post-ColonialAppraisal

In many African Societies, social groups have been very instrumental in providing social capital
for local community development. However, discourses on community development have not been very
authoritative on the specific roles gender-oriented social groups play especially in patriarchal-imposing
cultural settings. Nso’, a very patriarchal setup in the Cameroon Grasslands, provides a lens through which
the exclusive role of female-constituted social groups in engendering diverse socio-economic changes could be
identified and assessed. From the foundational years of the polity right through the colonial and post-colonial
eras, the Nso’ women improvised and coordinated collective strategies geared initially towards addressing
issues specifically related to their needs. With the use of primary and secondary data, the study examines
some of the actions of the female social groups and argues that in the course of lending premium to
resolving their preoccupations, they parenthetically contributed to transforming their communities.