(Business in Cameroon) - Guinness Cameroon, subsidiary of the British brewery, Diageo, injected a total of 3 billion FCFA in an investment programme that it has been conducting since 2009 in northern Cameroon to boost sorghum production. This was announced at a site visit organised by the brewery on November 4, 2014 in Douala.

With this investment, Cameroon’s number 2 brewing company, which is runner-up to the Castel group with Brasseries du Cameroun, plans to bring down its raw materials imports to 50% instead of the current estimate of 80%.

This basically involves the gradual substitution of imported cereals such as malt with local products, such as sorghum, which Guinness has been buying from North Cameroon farmers since 2009 in the range of 250 to 400 tonnes per annum according to Mariam Haman Adama, Coordinator of the Regional Council of Farmers’ Organisations in Northern Cameroon (CROPSEC).

In December 2013, Guinness Cameroon signed a partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture to supply cassava corn and sorghum to the Investment Project for the Development of Agricultural Markets (PIDMA), implemented by the Cameroonian government and financed to the tune of 50 billion FCFA thanks to a financial competition held by the World Bank.

By focusing on local produce, the company aims not only to reduce its production costs but also to access the preferential Customs arrangement in effect in CEMAC (the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa) and CEEAC (Economic Community of Central African States), two communities in which Cameroon is a member.

The two sub-regional organisations have special approvals allowing companies having at least 40% of locally produced raw goods in their products to export them duty-free to the six countries of CEMAC and the ten countries of the CEEAC.