Business

Barely 2% of Cameroonians make purchases online. This was revealed at the opening of the 2^nd Afrikebiz Fair. The event gathers e-commerce companies based in Africa to look at ways and means of supporting the development of e-commerce in Africa.

According to official figures, the low rate is due to the fact that hardly 400,000 Cameroonians have access to the internet out of a population of over 20 million inhabitants.

The costs in Cameroon are noticeably higher than in countries of comparable level such as Cote d’Ivoire or Senegal.

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Ngwa Bertrand

29.Apr.2015

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The General Manager of the Cameroon Development Corporation, CDC Franklin Ngoni Njie has reportedly fired the Estate Manager for the Idenau Oil Palm Estate and a host of other senior workers from the company. Our informant at the head office in Bota revealed that Alexander Tata Kinsai and his Estate Field Assistant, Samuel Wole were involved in a vicious corrupt scamming process whereby temporal ghost workers were regularly included on the general list of workers. The Tata Kinsai/Wole scheme raised payment vouchers which were forwarded to the head office and payments gotten. The GM's decision coming only after Cameroon Concord's special report on the CDC is very disturbing.

Cameroon Concord also learnt from security sources that the scamming managers at CDC went home with approximately 5-6 millions FCFA each month. Our source revealed at the time of writing this report that Franklin Ngoni Njie has ordered the creation of an internal commission of inquiry with a mandate to scrutinize all the Estates of the CDC. Perhaps, the GM's action is deliberate, perhaps it is accidental, what is abundantly clear is that Franklin Ngoni Njie is heading a shameful CDC.

 

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Ngwa Bertrand

25.Apr.2015

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The Cameroonian subsidiary of the pan-African group Ecobank has been approached by the Cameroon Airlines Corporation (Camair Co) to raise 30 billion FCFA in financing to implement recovery programme for the airline. This was revealed by Camair Co Managing Director, Jean Paul Nana Sandjo, in an interview with the Cameroonian government’s daily publication.

“The financing is already available. It will be disbursed in the next two to three weeks. After, we will roll out the recovery plan which will involve purchasing six planes to add to the two MA60s we already have. This will bring Camair-Co’s fleet to 11 by July-August,” stated the company’s managing director who indicated that the airline was 30 billion FCFA after 4 years of activities.

In addition to strengthening the company’s fleet, Jean Paul Nana Sandjo stated that the financing from Ecobank will be used to put in place maintenance facilities for the airline’s aircrafts. Indeed, explains the managing director, despite a lack of cash-flow, Camair Co spends a lot on the maintenance of its planes abroad, at times due to maintenance issues as basic as a flat tire.

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Ngwa Bertrand

23.Apr.2015

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Despite last week’s delivery of two new planes to the Chinese company, Avic International, the fate of Camair Co still hangs in the balance. This was what Camair Co’s Managing Director, Jean Paul Nana Sandjo, revealed.

“Camair-Co was launched in circumstances that created a lot of debt. Today, we are recovering, but we still owe 30 billion FCFA. Conclusion: things are still bad,” he confessed as he went on to reveal Cameroon’s national carrier’s colossal debt after recently celebrating its fourth birthday.

With 700 employees, “we have to reduce our labour force to less than 150. We currently have 250,” stated Camair Co’s Managing Director. Facing this situation, Jean Paul Nana Sandjo maintains that the company has no alternative but to consolidate its fleet which now comprises three aircraft servicing “15 destinations.”

Confronted with financial struggles since it opened, with high charges (for example, a a flat tire has to be sent abroad for repair due to a lack of technical capacity) and low revenue, the national carrier, currently holding third place behind Air France and Brussels Airline, has only survived this far thanks to financial support from the government.

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Ngwa Bertrand

22.Apr.2015

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The Cameroon Development Corporation, CDC like the National Hydro Carbon company, SNH are both state-owned companies. The similarities end there. Ever since the appointment of Njie Ngoni Franklin as General Manager of CDC, the biggest agro-industrial plant in West Africa has been collapsing at catastrophic rapidity never known in the history of the corporation. Interestingly, the elders and elites of the South West region have maintained a kind of deliberate silence over the downward trends taken by CDC. The situation has become so bad that something needs to be done and done in a hurry to save the Cameroon Development Corporation. The financial situation of the company is at best zero. Leadership is completely absent and things are really falling apart.

Cameroon Concord can now reveal that hundreds of CDC workers are leaving and seeking employment in other companies such as Heve Sud found in the South region of Cameroon precisely in Ebolowa. We have also gathered intelligence that many more are heading to Gabon and Equatorial Guinea. Our Chief intelligence officer in the South West region who contributed to this report hinted that a CDC Overseer on category 5A under the Njie Ngoni Franklin administration ends 313.86 frs FCFA an hour and he/she is expected to work 8 hours a day. Correspondingly, a junior Overseer on category 4A who earns even less is also expected to perform the same task like on overseer on category 5A. Nothing can best represent a situation where things have turned upside down and inside out than the fact that echelon no longer means anything at CDC.

Cameroon Concord understands the leadership has cut down the allowances of all senior staffs and instituted numerous social insurance contributions and nothing seems to change. Intrinsically, CDC operates a very funny payment method!! Salaries are accorded to workers who have attained category 7 only. From Category 1 to 6 you are simply a wage earner meaning it is pay as you work. If you are sick, it is the company's hospital that can give a worker a sick pay.

In one of the payslips handed to our cream of journalists late last week, we found out that as a CDC worker, you are deducted Council tax, Personal income tax, CRTV tax, Land Bank tax, National Social Insurance contribution, and a 280 frs CFA compulsory registration for medical issues. Njie Ngoni Franklin has completely lost touch with the common labourers who are the mainstay of the company. We of this publication are predicting that if the leadership fails to change its policy, CDC will be a thing of the past.

 

 

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Ngwa Bertrand

21.Apr.2015

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Africa’s inventor of the continent’s first medical tablet, the Cardiopad, Arthur Zang, could win a portion of the 93 million FCFA (150,000 USD) of 2015’s Prize for Innovation in Africa (PIA) held by the African Innovation Foundation (AIF).

The Cameroonian engineer who developed the tablet that facilitates cardiovascular testing with results being communicated remotely is among the 10 nominees for 2015’s Prize for Innovation in Africa out of 925 candidates from 41 African countries.

The final results will be announced on May 12 and 13 in Skhirat in Morocco, the country which the AIF has referred to as “becoming a platform for innovation in Africa.”

Zang grew up in Mbankomo, a town 22 kilometres from Cameroon’s capital, Yaoundé. It had no running water and the electricity supply was intermittent. “During that time I learned to make do with little,” he says. Making it to university to study computer engineering in Yaoundé, he became fascinated by the potential of computers to changing lives. From his disadvantaged beginnings, he drew the motivation to solve problems that would leave humanity better off.

Zang felt he could best serve Cameroon by improving the health of its people. Conscious of the rising toll from heart disease caused by changing lifestyles and the difficulty of getting a reliable early diagnosis – especially in rural communities – he  designed a robust, portable, low-cost way to measure heart health, anywhere, any time. In 2014, his invention inspired U.S. business magazine Forbes to list Zang among the “30 most promising entrepreneurs in Africa”.

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Ngwa Bertrand

21.Apr.2015

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