(Business in Cameroon) - After nearly 4 years of searching, the Cameroonian state has finally sold off its assets in the station of the National Aviculture and Small Livestock Development Office (ONDAPB) in Douala to the Cameroonian company Ronax Invest. The deeds of this sale of assets have been signed recently in Yaoundé, the capital of the country, by the Minister of Finance, Alamine Ousmane Mey, and Philippe Esso, Managing Director of Ronax Invest.

According to the terms of the transaction, we learned officially, Ronax Invest, who acquired the residual assets of this ONDAPB station for an amount of FCfa 250 million, has committed to invest the tidy sum of FCfa 1.8 billion. In such a manner as to be able to put its first loads of broilers and chicken pieces on the market as early as December 2017.

The development plan of Ronax Invest also foresees, in the medium term, processing chicken flesh into by-products, producing day-old chicks and feed.

Créé en 1981, l’Office national pour le développement de l’aviculture et le petit bétail avait pour mission de vulgariser et de promouvoir l’élevage avicole et du petit bétail au Cameroun, et d’encadrer les opérateurs de ces filières.

The breeding structure that the Cameroonian State has sold off to a private enterprise is spread over a site of 15 hectares in the area of Yassa, in the suburbs of the economic capital of the country. It has been shut down for more than 10 years. Its privatisation, the Minister of Finance specified in an invitation for expressions of interest launched in November 2013, aims at “absorbing the deficit in animal protein" in the country and limiting “imports of day-old chicks and feed". Created in 1981, the National Office for the Development of Aviculture and Small Livestock had as its mission the dissemination and promotion of raising birds and small livestock in Cameroon, and to train operators in these sectors.

Through seven stations spread across the national territory, this structure took care in real terms of the selection and distribution of breeding stock in rural areas and production of feed. Listed in the programme of companies to be privatised since the 1990's, the Office has already sold off three of its stations, we learn from reliable sources.

Brice R. Mbodiam