In a bid to scale up youth and women-led SMEs in Cameroon whose growth is stymied by numerous challenges like limited access to finance, inadequate business planning, and a challenging tax structure, the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Center (SBEC) of the Denis and Leonora Foretia Foundation organized a two-day forum in Yaounde aimed at addressing existing challenges and promoting sustainable business practices.
The 2025 SBEC Forum, under the theme “Scaling Up: Expanding youth and women-led SMEs in Cameroon” brought together entrepreneurs, members of the civil society, policy makers, financial institutions, international organisations, business consulting firms and members of the general public interested in entrepreneurship who exchanged on ways of helping those still in the informal sector grow their businesses.
Participants were treated to an engaging keynote address by Mr Babissakana, CEO of Prescriptor, on how an entrepreneur with a convincing business plan for his company can source funding, recruit the right persons and expand his business to a point that it cannot collapse with his demise because he has groomed someone for continuity.
This was followed by a roundtable on the theme: Entrepreneurship in action: Tackling Barriers to Growth in Cameroon in which panellists, using their own experiences made recommendations on what needed to be done to grow businesses.
Mr Bertin Choffo, an industry captain who is CEO of PAFIC SARL, inspired participants on the creation and survival of his enterprise. He was accompanied on the panel by Mr Boris Kamga Souop, Managing director of Business Development Services and Dr Vera Kum, Research Fellow, Nkafu Policy Institute.
All three panellists were agreed that financing was not the most important thing in a business but the mindset and business plan. They were also agreed that networking was important in growing a business.
Mr Kamga was concerned about adding value. The entrepreneur should be able to identify a problem and bring about a solution. Contrary to the position held by most Cameroonians that banks don’t give out loans, Kamga said a good business plan can fetch you a loan.
Taking the cue from him, Mr Choffo said it was possible to construct a confidence capital from doing little investments/
Choffo stunned participants when he spoke against institutional support to entrepreneurs, regretting that the state ended up giving out money to the wrong investors, even to dead men. He recommended that the state should come out with criteria for eligibility and hand over the money intended as seed capital to be managed by banks.
For her part, Dr Vera Kum emphasised on networking or creating partnerships with the right people.
Addressing the fear by Cameroonians to go formal due to taxes, Boris Kamga said it was necessary to take the bold step to formalize your business in order to benefit from tax exemptions.
All panellists were also agreed that the educational system in Cameroon which prioritised more theory that practicals was a drawback to competitiveness in enterprises. Mr Choffo regretted he had to recruit 12 Indian engineers to run the machines in his factory because he found no qualified graduates from Polytechnique to recruit.
In this connection, Dr Vera Kum advised Cameroonian students to use their holidays to work even as volunteers in factories to gain experience instead of waiting for internship which usually last just two months.
On the subject of networking and mentorship, Essama Florence, a chicken dealer, told of how with a ready capital he was unable to succeed in business, but thanks to networking and mentorship from SBEC, she has become a successful businesswoman in the chicken distribution industry.
Speaking to the press on the objective of the forum, Sylvia Namondo Ezukwu, interim Director of SBEC said the forum which was in its 6th edition is to “bring stakeholders together to understand the challenges faced by SMES, brainstorm and troubleshoot and come up with good policies and advocate for a favourable ecosystem for SMES”. She said they having a host of new faces from government, industry, civil society to brainstom for favourable policies for SMEs.
Namondo said at the end of two days they were going to come out with a roadmap on how to address and how to better advocate favourable policies for SMEs. She said this year they had brought mentors from the banking sector and other sectors to meet the SMEs one on one and understand their challenges and come out with a roadmap on how to improve on their skills, change their mindset so that their businesses can thrive in an economy like Cameroon’s.
