“National Entrepreneurship Framework With Integrated Coordination Mechanism Is Ideal”

Cameroon has deployed various public ini­ tiatives over the years to facilitate private investment. From an economic evaluation standpoint, what is your appraisal of their outcomes? Cameroon’s government policy clearly supports youth entrepreneurship development, both through the national development strategy and through dedicated programmes and financing mechanisms. The National Development Strategy 2020–2030 (SND30) explicitly identifies youth entrepreneurship as part of structural economic transformation. The government has translated this policy commitment into specific programmes such as the PAJER-U, FOGAJEUNE, PIASI, FNE and the recent convention between the go­ vernment of Cameroon and Private agencies such as API, and APME. Given this motivation, government’s investment-promotion policies have contributed to private-sector development, but their impact on structural transformation, productivity and inclusive growth remains partial and uneven. There is evidence that these policies have facilitated some private investment. The World Bank reports that private investment increased by 4.1 per cent in 2024, with parti­ cularly important investment associated with new cement-processing plants and agro-pro­ cessing facilities. Credit to the private sector also increased by 25.6 per cent in 2024. World Bank. For instance, with the PAJER-U the main contribution is on training, business development, financing and post-financing support for young entrepreneurs across 17 value chains. MINJEC reports 4,974 youth projects installed with subsequent support to youth enterprises. Si­ milarly, the PIASI Supported income-generating activities and socio-economic integration, which contributed to self-employment and livelihood diversification, particularly among vulnerable groups. Meanwhile, the FNE promoted employ­ ment intermediation, vocational training, and entrepreneurship and financing, and realized the broadest employment-intermediation role by 2022 with 807,000 people inserted, about 117,505 trained, about 75,087 projects financed, and roughly 187,718 direct jobs generated by financed projects. These outcomes are significant because they suggest that government’s policy framework is effective. However, persistent constraints like high energy and transport costs, limited access to finance, regulatory uncertainty and administrative barriers and so on, continue to limit their overall effectiveness. In your view, how well have these inter­ ventions solved the underlying problems? Young entrepreneurs in Cameroon face several interconnected constraints including limited ac­ cess to affordable finance, especially because of high collateral requirements and interest rates, unreliable and costly electricity, which raises operating costs and reduces productivity, as well as high tax and regulatory burdens, making formalization and business growth dif­ ficult. Gaps in managerial, financial and technical skills reinforce these challenges making it dif­ ficult for young entrepreneurs to scale from small informal businesses into productive, formal SMEs. So, while government youth entrepreneur programmes to a limited extent have addressed the symptoms of unemployment and weak en­ trepreneurship, they have not fully addressed the structural constraints facing private busi­ nesses. However, these programmes have helped many young people to enter economic activity, but have been less successful in transforming the business environment needed for enterprises to survive, expand and create durable employ­ ment. How effective have these promotion pro­ grammes been driving real structural trans­ formation? These programmes have been somewhat ef­ fective at expanding participation in entrepre­ neurship than at producing structural transfor­ mation. They have helped some young people create businesses, obtain finance and enter formal economic channels, but there is less evidence of large-scale transition from informal microenterprises to formal SMEs and less so to innovative, productive, high-growth firms. The available evidence suggests that they have not yet fundamentally shifted Cameroon from pre­ dominantly informal, low-productivity activity toward a large base of formal, scalable, and high-value enterprises. This is because structural constraints in Cameroon’s economy remain per­ vasive. Cameroon’s informality is driven not simply by lack of entrepreneurship support, but by taxation, registration costs, credit constraints and the perceived costs and benefits of becoming formal. With mul...