Digitaldividend

Cameroon hinges its future economic growth on digitalization

Flavien Kouatcha checks his mail daily, hoping to see a response to the adverts he has posted online to find customers. He is the founder of Save Our Agriculture, an agro-business startup in Cameroon’s economic capital Douala. Kouatcha produces acquaponic kits which enable farmers to grow crops and rear fish in the same water, thereby saving space and water.

“Our customers are few because we are targeting small farmers in rural areas where the Internet connectivity has remained a problem. But we are hoping things will change in the near future,” Kouatcha told Chinafrica.

Cameroon is referred to as the breadbasket of the Central African sub-region because of its large food exports to countries in the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS).

Kouatcha is hoping to sell his products in this large market.

Kwajika Roland, whose graphic design startup Duracana is almost 18 months old, also thinks his company would be more profitable if Cameroon had a vibrant digital economy.

“Despite the fact that we have an online presence, we depend on a person-to-person relationship to sell our services, which is relatively difficult. So far, I can rate our performance on a scale of 3/10,” Roland said. digital infrastructure as well as establish a public key infrastructure in Cameroon’s public administration. This will facilitate a range of activities such as e-banking and e-commerce.

The government has also made one of the three privately owned network service providers in Cameroon serve mostly rural areas, as a step toward boosting mobile phone penetration in the country.