It is with a smile on the face that Yaya Awaye, a Central African refugee from the Kentzou municipality in the Kadey division of the East region received a cheque worth over 1.7 million FCFA at the esplanade of the Batouri city council in the Kadey division of the East region on the 7th of August 2024.
“This amount will help me produce about 2000 table chickens each cycle”, she said. Just like her, Bombo Epse Ngonsi Solange, an agro pastoral entrepreneur
From Batouri received a cheque worth 5.9 million FCFA on the same occasion. She revealed that, “the business plan which has enabled me to be selected for financing is aimed at producing 60 tons of maize each year within a period of three years on a surface area of 10 hectares of land using a labour force of about 6 persons with an estimated turn-over of about 12 million FCFA per year”.
The cheques cited above were handed over during an official ceremony organized by the International Labour Organization (ILO) to award cheques to
winners of the business plan competition launched some two years ago.
During the occasion, 20 of the best business plans out of 715 competitors from the Batouri, Ketté and Kentzou municipalities in the Kadey Division, received financing worth 179 million FCFA , 50% of which represented support from the ILO/KOICA project, 40% in the form of loans offered by MUFID-Batouri Microfinance and 10% representing the personal contribution of the winners.
The financing granted is going to touch 211 individual or collective entrepreneurs, including 159 women (75%), 52 men (25%), 47 refugees (22%), 16 indigenous people (8%) and 1 internally displaced person (0.5%). According to expert analysis, this business plan competition will help to increase agro pastoral production in the targeted councils by 1,575 tons of cassava, 227 tons of maize and 21,000 table chickens for additional revenues estimated at over 330 million FCFA after one year.
The ceremony, coupled with a mini trade fair was presided over by Nelson Ndi Aka’a, 3 rd assistant senior divisional officer of the Kadey division. He reminded the beneficiaries that the administration will scrupulously supervise the targeted investments and track those who will attempt to divert the funds for other purposes.
For her part, Nathalie Nguemba, Inspector General at the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and the Family (MINPROFF) and president of the steering committee, thanked ILO and KOICA for initiating the project which targets particularly women especially as 13 out of the 20 business plans selected were those belonging to individual or collective women’s groups. She called on the women entrepreneurs to meet up with their promises by respecting the business plans they presented.
According to Gilles Njike, manager of the project entitled “empowering women for resilient economies and peaceful communities in the refugee affected regions of the East and Adamawa in Cameroon” financed by KOICA and implemented by ILO, “the business plan competition is aimed at assisting entrepreneurs in the two regions to develop value chain activities in the production of maize, cassava and chicken”.
Launched in December 2021, the project has so far carried organization, structuring, capacity building and financing of thousands of entrepreneurs in the two regions.
By Chi Sébastian
