(Business in Cameroon) - A website (www.wouri.tv), a YouTube channel (Wouri TV) and mobile applications under development. This is the collection of broadcasting tools set up by the start-up Wouri Entertainment, to promote Cameroonian cinema online.

Since its launch in July 2016, this start-up operating in production, audio-visual content distribution and support for directors (financing, making shooting material available), has already been broadcasting via its different channels, several full-length feature and short films, in addition to a series of 26 episodes.

This offer, Wouri Entertainment is looking to expand it in 2017, while organising, the owners of the start-up highlight, “new screenings in European cinemas (France, then Belgium and Germany)”. Starting from 2018, Wouri Entertainment even plans to conquer other African countries.

Launched by Paulette Fotsing and Patrick Kengne, two young Cameroonians who respectively studied security and industrial risks then telecommunications in France, this start-up was “born from the passion and love of its founders for cinema, and from the desire to support Cameroon in developing its own cinema industry, just as in the case of Nollywood in Nigeria”.

Additionally, with cinemas being closed in the country several years ago, the difficulties directors face when trying to gain access to some well-known television channels, and DVD piracy; the start-up is giving priority to internet broadcasting. This in addition to, we learned, “having succeeded in seducing many Pan African TV channels, such Nollywood or A+ from the Canal+ group”.

Wouri Entertainment offers to its clients the possibility of directly paying online, through PayPal. “In the short term, mobile payment solutions will appear on the site, which will enable the local population, with a good internet connection, to also profit from these exclusive videos”, Patrick Kengne pointed out.

Brice R. Mbodiam