Cameroon Logged $167 Million of Expansions Before Its Next Call

Boma Donatus, interim general manager of Cameroon's Investment Promotion Agency, told an audience in Yaoundé on June 9, 2026 that the foreign firms his agency had surveyed "were very interested in reinvesting in the country." On August 7 the same agency opened a nationwide call for projects it does not yet hold, with applications closing on August 15 and the selected promoters presented at the Cameroon Investment Forum in Yaoundé from November 18 to 20.

The evidence behind Donatus's sentence is a 144-page report, Cameroon's Business Climate at a Glance: Evidence from the UNIDO-IPA Cameroon Pilot Surveys of Foreign Direct Investment Enterprises, produced by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization with the agency and unveiled in Yaoundé on June 9, 2026. It covers 75 foreign-invested companies employing more than 24,000 people. Those firms had already reinvested US$86.1 million and told the surveyors they planned a further US$166.8 million. The share intending to expand was 68%, and 84% of respondents fell into high-confidence categories on the report's Business Confidence Composite Index. The share holding a formal investment plan was 44%.

The survey locates the constraint in documentation. Between the 68% who intend to expand and the 44% who have a formal plan sits a gap of 24 points, or about 18 of the 75 firms. Those 18 are named, located and already inside the incentives regime the agency administers. The call for projects that closes on August 15 goes looking for a different population, and asks it for the document the first population has not written.

Two other findings in the same report complicate the case for shifting effort. About half the surveyed firms qualified as strong anchors and accounted for more than 92% of employment in the sample, so an aftercare program that treats 75 accounts as equal spends most of its time on firms holding under 8% of the jobs. The second is what the reinvestment is for. Of the surveyed firms, 73% operate in tradable sectors and only 23% export regularly, and the planned spending concentrates in machinery, equipment, transport assets and production infrastructure. Converting that pipeline adds capacity aimed largely at the domestic market, which is not the same as earning foreign exchange. Business in Cameroon reported on August 5, 2026 that the government faces a budget financing gap over 2027–2029 without a new IMF program.

The strongest case for the forum is that the missing plans are a financing symptom rather than a capability gap. A firm does not write and cost an investment plan it has no route to fund, and the routes narrowed this year: the Bank of Central African States halted a key refinancing facility for productive investments across CEMAC in June 2026. Deal rooms that put banks, development finance institutions and private equity in front of promoters address a constraint no aftercare officer can. Both readings are testable and the agency holds the data for both. If the share of surveyed firms with a formal investment plan rises above 44% at the next survey round without any new aftercare service being added, the gap was financing and the argument here is wrong. The same conclusion follows if the November forum closes more financing by value before the end of 2027 than the US$166.8 million pipeline converts into realized capital.

The regime the agency administers is small enough that it needs both. Agency figures released in May 2026 put realized investment under the incentives program at nearly CFAF 1.9 trillion across 156 approved companies since 2014, with more than 16,000 direct jobs, which works out at about 13 approvals a year. Applications for the November forum close on August 15, 2026.