Businessmen from South Africa are in the country to intensify trade and investment.

Cameroon and South Africa are seeking ways of building a stable and dynamic platform to deepen trade between the two countries. A delegation of South African businessmen led by the country’s Vice Minister of Trade and Industry, Elizabeth Thabethe, is currently undergoing a weeklong trade and investment mission in Cameroon to seal business deals, negotiate new ones as well as share experiences with their Cameroonian peers. Discussions are focusing on how to improve the investment climate not only for inter-state trade but also to attract viable direct foreign investment capable of catapulting the economies to boom.

Speaking in Yaounde during a meeting with Cameroon’s economic stakeholders, Elizabeth Thabethe disclosed that over the last two years the two countries have had seven exchange visits on forth and back basis both at governmental and business levels. “By fostering closer trade and investment ties, we would be able to mobilise to maximum level our collective resources, thereby promoting substantive intra-African trade,” she said. Mrs Thabethe advocated pursuit of infrastructural development, building of the manufacturing sector to be competitive with the rest of the world, aggressive industrialisation and diversification of the economies and giving substantial support to small and medium-size enterprises which she described as “locomotive force to employment and wealth creation.

According to Cameroon’s Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development, the country has negotiated an irreversible bend towards emergence and that deepening partnership with a development giant like South Africa would be a good step in reviving needed growth. Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi said Cameroon has made significant steps in improving its business climate, as testified by the last year’s World Bank Doing Business Report and is politically stable and endowed with enormous resources both natural as well as a youthful and well trained workforce. “Cameroon is a place to do business,” the Minister noted.

Going by the programme, the visiting delegation will sign Memorandums of Understanding with stakeholders in Cameroon notably with the country’s Norms and Standardisation Agency (ANOR), have one-on-one meetings with stakeholders in the agriculture, energy, infrastructure, timber and arts and music sectors as well as visit some sites in Yaounde, Douala and Kribi. The visit ends on Saturday October 6.