(Business in Cameroon) - On June 14, 2019, before the national assembly, Mounouna Fotsou (photo), the minister of youth affairs, exposed the results of the 3-year special youth plan prescribed by president Paul Biya in February 2016. In the long term, this XAF102 billion programme is aimed at facilitating and boosting economic integration for 1,500 young people in four key domains, agriculture, digital economy, industry and innovation namely.

“It appears that 780,000 young people are registered at the national youth observatory. 51.06% of them request funding for their self-employment or entrepreneurship projects. Close to 2,000 of the registrants are from the diaspora,” the official said.

“About 22,000 of the registrants have been referenced to various funding and support bureaus,” he added.

According to Mounouna Fotsou, more than 32,000 of the business plans submitted were received in the 10 regions. 33.70% of the projects are in the agriculture sector while 28.84%, 22.85% and 10.48% of the projects are respectively in the industry, digital economy and innovation sectors. 4.4% have been registered in non-listed sectors.

In January 2018, the committee of that plan approved the first group of 2,150 projects for about XAF3 billion investment.  The youth minister indicated that in 2017, the ministry supported the incubation and elaboration of more than 7,000 individual and group projects for about XAF10 billion of investments.

S.A