Meeting Tangible Investment Needs!

The 10th edition of the International Fair for Enterprises, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises and Partnerships (PROMOTE) has come and gone and stakeholders are certainly taking stock of how well they fared. As the over a thousand business promoters from diverse backgrounds, among other actors, count their gains and losses from the business fair, one thing should not be forgotten – That the fruits must be made to be seen and felt in the short, medium and longterms. For, this is what could cause a turnaround in the national economy. Indeed, the theme for this year’s business rendezvous, “Private Enterprise and the Business Environment: What Benchmarks in the Face of National and International Economic Challenges,” is evocative enough of the need to level local and global mountains for the economy to boom. Fortunately, the June 12-21, 2026 trade come together at the Yaounde Conference Centre gave business enterprises and even consular services the opportunity to showcase what they have and attract the population to their goods and services. Even more, they had the chance to better understand the country’s investment potentials in diverse sectors as well as what government is doing to polish up the business environment for better mutually-beneficial ventures. A seed was therefore sown and must be nurtured to produce desired fruits. This is what would give the biennial event more meaning and fetch better gains for the institutions that participated, the host government and Cameroonians as a whole. Success here relies on better follow up at all levels. Beyond sales, for those who had goods and services, one of the spinoffs of PROMOTE 2026, like others, should be the business contacts created. While Memorandums of Understanding were signed between some of the participants, a good number of them also met with several government officials, expressed their desire to invest and started discussions which could and should be made to bear fruits. The State needs viable investments; potentials are there but challenges must be surmounted. The highly-attended Yaounde fair was just a take-off point and how farther the actors go in their qu...