(Business in Cameroon) - Cameroonian cocoa processing company Neo Industry and French business engineering firm CIOA recently signed a joint-venture agreement to create Neo Real Estate. According to Bourse Direct, which revealed the information, the joint-venture will be 49%-owned by CIOA and 51% by Neo Industry.

According to our sources, Neo Real Estate will exploit the licenced technologies of CIOA group’s micro-plants Bati-Fablab to produce 80% of the materials needed for the construction of buildings. The real estate joint-venture will also build a Bati-Fablab pilot plant capable of building a 1,000 housing yearly, in the West region.  

In addition, it will install a centre for the preparation and distribution of Road Rock, an efficient and environment-friendly technology used in street paving without any other inputs. Neo Real Estate will also implement a programme aimed at setting a Bati-Fablab plant in each of the 9 other regions in Cameroon either directly or under licence. It will also execute a procurement contract for an initial programme launched for the construction of 100 houses for Neo Industry’s employees in Kékem.

On close observation, it appears that Neo Real Estate plans to position itself in the housing and road construction sectors that offer numerous investment opportunities in Cameroon. Indeed, officially, the housing deficit in the country is about 1.3 million units. In addition, because of the exorbitant cost of a kilometer of paved road, which is about double the average in Africa according to the national road council Conaroute, Cameroon only has 7,000 kilometers of paved roads. The country expects to increase this to 8,500 kilometers in 2020. Despite this, it will only represent 17% of the national road network.

Brice R. Mbodiam