On March 17th local authorities in Far North Cameroon, the country's main cotton-growing region, seized almost 50 tonnes of cotton that was illegally bound, on the back of a fleet of motorcycles, for Nigeria, where the crop is sold at roughly three-times the price. Cotton prices in Cameroon are regulated by the country's only cotton processing company, the government-controlled Société de développement du coton (Sodecoton). The company is 59% owned by the state, 30% by the French-based Développement des Agro-industries du Sud and 11% by Société Mobilière d'Investissement du Cameroun, a Cameroonian holding company managed by a consortium of senior politicians from the north of the country. Sodecoton has exclusive rights to process cotton seeds commercially and, since 2005, when exports of cotton were banned, producers have had to sell their entire yield to the company.

Sodecoton has kept producer prices stable between CFAfr150 (31 US cents) and CFAfr200 since 1995. The regulated price acted as an incentive for farmers to cultivate cotton while the international price remained relatively stable and in line with other cash crops. However, since 2005 the price of other cash crops has risen faster than cotton, while fertiliser prices increased substantially and farmers have been prevented from selling their cotton abroad. While the CFA franc value of cotton increased by 250% on the international market between the first quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2011, the regulated price in Cameroon increased by less than 30%. As a result, many farmers have started to cultivate other crops or have shifted into the black market. Cameroon's official cotton production-which is dominated by low-yield small-scale farming-has decreased by almost 60% since its peak in 2004.