Fostering economic freedom: Entrepreneurs drilled to improving business performances.

This is the focus of a two-day workshop taking place in Yaounde. The workshop which ends today Friday, is being organised by the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Center, SBEC, of the Denis and Lenora Foretia Foundation. 

The capacity building workshop is part of a project implemented by SBEC. The project is titled: “Powering Prosperity and Economic Freedom for Women and Youths in Cameroon”.

The SMEs flagship business management training was geared towards assisting businesses operators establish a comprehensive small business strategy and grow.

“Our capacity building workshops are opportunities for us to get closer to the entrepreneurs, get to know what their main challenges are and what’s the situation of the terrain because they are the ones in the field and know how the ecosystem is really working,” Meh Desmond Kum, associate at SBEC explained. 

He revealed that during the training,the participants will be schooled on how business management or entrepreneurship development in Cameroon can be strengthened. 

“At the end of this, they would have strengthened their capacities in terms of account management, sales and marketing, human resource management and even tax procedures,” Meh told The Guardian Post. 

For two days, the participants will be trained on modules such as taxation, business registration procedures, marketing, accounting and finances, and ways of using innovative technology to grow businesses. 

“We believe that it is through these efforts that we can continue to build capacities of entrepreneurs and continue to build the ecosystem making sure that SMEs are sustainable in Cameroon. If we don’t build their capacities, I’m sure that there are many entrepreneurs that are not going to withstand after five years of existence,” he added. 

Participants hail initiative 

Going by the many participants, the initiative to organise the capacity building workshop is highly saluted. One of the participants, Awa Emilienne, said she is into production of local juice named E-lov Natural Juice. 

Lauding the initiative, the entrepreneur said she has high expectations of the workshop.

“I’m a juice producer and still working in the informal sector, so I hope that at the end of this training I will have all the necessary information on how to go about legalising my business and which taxes to pay or not,” the juice producer said. 

“I also want to know how to organise my business such that with or without my physical presence, the business can still do well. So, I have to look into consideration of how to build the team and the business, manage finance, how to do accountings,” the young female entrepreneur added. 

On her part, Carine Andela who is the President of ASENIA, an association promoting Made in Cameroon, hailed the initiative.

She said “ASENIA regroups over 60 SMEs...what we expect from this workshop is to reinforce the capacities of entrepreneurs, professionalising entrepreneurship and networking”. 

Noting that the ASENIA network is made up of mostly women, Andela explained that it is important to capacitate the members who don’t often have the opportunity to improve on their capacities and a well-tailored follow-up. 

“To better participate in the economy of our country, these women need to be accompanied and NGOs like SBEC can accompany us in everything fiscal, management, accounting and marketing,” the ASENIA president assured. 

Context of workshop

It is worth noting that 80% of the businesses created in Cameroon often die before their first 5 years of existence with most of them remaining in the informal sector. 

Going by recent statistics from the National Institute of Statistics, NIS, about 90% of the labour force in the country remain trapped in the informal sector. Women and youth are the most represented in this sector, due to a number of challenges faced. 

NIS statistics show that in the agricultural sector for example, Cameroonian women represent 71.6% of workers in the informal agricultural sector. However, almost 52% of them still live below the poverty line and 79.2% of them remaining under-employed.

It is in line with this that SBEC project is offering comprehensive training programme for young entrepreneurs for a period of 6 months to enable them to acquire viable skills in management and business, regulatory processes, finance and other capabilities necessary for overall improvement. 

This story was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3263 of Friday October 18, 2024