PRESS RELEASE
Yaounde, 21 April 2016
# "Investing in Cameroon, Land of Attractiveness"
An international economic conference on investment opportunities in Cameroon will take place on 17 and 18 May 2016 in Yaounde, Cameroon.
Addressing French employers at the Cameroon-France Economic Forum in Paris on 31 January 2013, President Paul Biya said “I urge you to seize today’s opportunities of participating in developing tomorrow’s Cameroon.”
On the initiative and under the distinguished patronage of H.E. Paul BIYA, President of the Republic, Cameroon will be hosting an international economic conference on the theme “Investing in Cameroon, Land of Attractiveness” on 17 and 18 May 2016 in Yaounde.
This unique event is designed to showcase the huge investment opportunities Cameroon offers businesspeople, industrialists, entrepreneurs, policy makers and financiers from Africa and around the world. It is a big conference which does afford a singular opportunity for key political, economic and financial players to hold constructive discussions on the country’s major development projects. In recent years, Cameroon has launched many high-impact projects in the key sectors of agribusiness, road, port and airport infrastructure, energy, real estate and urban development, extractive industries and new technologies. The mere diversity of these sectors bespeaks the wide array of opportunities for foreign investors.
The economic conference will strive to provide concrete and pragmatic solutions to further improve Cameroon’s investment terms and conditions. In this regard, it falls within the broader framework of Cameroon’s Vision to become an emerging country by 2035.
More than 500 participants comprising Ministers, representatives of African and international development institutions, as well as business leaders, investors and financiers will be meeting in Yaounde to review Cameroon’s economic assets and the abundant investment opportunities for industrialists and financiers.
Cameroon’s lofty ambition of being a “land of attractiveness” for investors is justified by: its strategic location in Africa (Cameroon borders a potential market of 300 million consumers, including Nigeria, DR Congo and Sudan); its substantial natural and human resources (varied climates and soils, whence its nickname “Africa in Miniature”; a very high and varied agro-pastoral and fisheries potential, making Cameroon “Central Africa’s breadbasket”; 17 million hectares of exploitable forests, making Cameroon Africa’s second largest forest block; a dynamic and well educated population estimated at 23 million in 2014, of which nearly 75% youth aged below 25 years); its political stability and sustained economic growth (an annual growth rate of over 5% since 2013); reforms undertaken to improve the business climate; its diversified economy; etc.
These assets coupled with the potential make Cameroon the leading economy in the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC), the engine of integration in Central Africa, and a “good risk” for foreign investors.
The Yaounde Economic Conference will feature world famous guest speakers who are either former heads of major international development institutions or successful innovators, notably: