On the sidelines of his participation in the Olympic Games in France, Cameroon’s President Paul Biya held a series of meetings and audiences with strategic partners and investors. On Tuesday July 30, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy marked the reunion with his former counterpart by presenting his willingness and determination to lead a delegation of investors and strategic financial partners to Cameroon in the coming weeks.
Thanks to its economic diversity and the quality of its financial management, Cameroon is one of the top foreign direct investors in the Cemac zone and on the continent. According to the 2024 report on Foreign Direct Investment in the world published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Cameroon benefited from an inflow of 799 million dollars in 2023 for its economy, that is 490 billion CFA francs. This attractiveness is an essential lever that attracts numerous strategic partners and investors, such as former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who was granted an audience with President Paul Biya in Paris, France, on Tuesday July 30, 2024.
One of the obstacles to the development of the African economy is the thorny problem of the availability of financing. Yet Africa has enormous natural resource potential. This potential remains under-exploited, or its exploitation does not include local transformation, which is likely to generate added value and wealth on the continent (…) One of the solutions lies in financing the exploitation and transformation of Africa’s natural resources on its own soil. For this, Africa needs a large volume of long-term capital.
Paul Biya President of the Republic Cameroon
President of the French Republic from 2007 to 2012, Nicolas Sarkozy has developed a special and unique relationship with President Paul Biya. For this meeting, the man who is a director of several companies and adviser to partner countries was keen to present a pro-business argument through direct preparatory meetings conducted for Cameroon by Samuel Mvondo Ayolo, the Minister Director of the Civil Cabinet of the Presidency of the Republic. An opportunity for the former French president to confirm the dynamic perception of the energy, agriculture, infrastructure and services sectors for investors. Cameroon’s economic recovery has resulted in overall growth estimated at 3.3% in 2023, rising to 3.9% in 2024. Inflation, meanwhile, has fallen from 7.3% at the end of 2022 to 5.9% at the end of 2023. It will reach 5.5% by the end of 2024, according to the IMF. These arguments bolster President Paul Biya’s advocacy of Cameroon’s investment attractiveness, enabling him to obtain concrete commitments from Nicolas Sarkozy.
You’ve got agriculture, which has always been a really buoyant sector for us insofar as it not only brings in foreign currency but also feeds a good part of the Cameroonian population. What’s more, today you have the boom in the digital economy, with a large proportion of the Cameroonian population’s youth absorbed in this sector, which is also increasingly profitable and could constitute investment niches for the French who would like to inject their funds into Cameroon.
Yannick LEVODO Economist
Former President Nicolas Sarkozy has confirmed to President Paul Biya his willingness to lead a high-level delegation of European and international strategic partners and investors to Cameroon in the coming weeks, to enable them to materialize their investment commitments. In Cameroon, according to the IMF, they will find macroeconomic stability and a non-oil primary budget deficit reduced to 2% of GDP, efforts to accelerate public finance management reform, foster structural transformation, and advance climate change adaptation and mitigation measures, all underpinned by a new financial market strategy capable of driving the structural transformation of the country’s economy. The success of this initiative will enable President Biya to realize one of his key commitments, that of raising living standards and promoting the development of entrepreneurship in Cameroon.
