Cameroon’s Diaspora Are Helping Local Businesses Back Home Flourish

Cars and motorcycle taxis struggle through the deep potholes of the dusty road. Visiting Sandra Tembei’s company, Mellow Group, makes you forget that her carpentry workshop is located in Douala, Cameroon’s major economic metropolis and an important port on the African west coast. This is what it often looks like here. 

“The roads are a disaster!” says 31-year-old Tembei, who stands with her arms crossed at the entrance to the workshop while men in dusty trousers carry a kitchen worktop behind her. The air smells of wood, glue and sweat. 

Mellow Group manufactures furniture, advertising signs and fitted kitchens.

In addition to the disastrous infrastructure, extremely slow bureaucracy and corruption make business life difficult. Above all, however, companies in Cameroon lack money for investment. Tembei says that loans are difficult to obtain, and those who do succeed in securing one are charged up to 30 percent interest.

Access to money is a major obstacle for companies in the Central African country. “Banks in Cameroon, as in other African countries, are underdeveloped and have little capital,” says Tobias Heidland, professor and head of the International Development Research Center at the Kiel Institute, a nonprofit specializing in economic research.

Tembei’s solution: She built her business with money from Cameroonians living and working abroad. This has been supported by WIDU, an initiative commissioned by the German government that connects African donors living in Europe with small businesses in their home countries. The WIDU platform is currently active in six African countries.

Thanks in part to the new circular saw, Mellow Group’s annual turnover has risen from the equivalent of just under $50,000 to over $150,000 in the past three years. That might sound minor in Europe or the U.S., but not in Cameroon, which has an annual gross domestic product per capita of just over $1,750. Tembei employs nine people, including three experienced carpenters. Each of them earns up to $400 per week, which is many times the minimum wage in Cameroon. Two years ago, Tembei was also able to buy a plot of land and build her workshop.

Globally, migrants transfer large sums of money to their home countries, most of which is used by the recipients to survive — to buy food or clothing, pay medical bills or school fees. They rarely put money directly into companies, says Heidland, although many would like to if they could be sure that that money would be put to good use.

Remittances are “an opportunity for economic development in Africa,” says a spokesperson for the German Society for International Cooperation, which operates the WIDU platform on behalf of the German government. Donors specify to WIDU which small businesses they would like to transfer money to. The recipients must raise the same amount. WIDU then doubles the sum using funds from the German government’s development budget. Ultimately, therefore, $1,000 becomes $4,000.

Around 2,200 companies in Cameroon have so far received money via the platform from Cameroonians living in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. In total, says WIDU, more than $4 million has been transferred to date.

In the capital Yaoundé, for example, the start-up Boussole Prosthesis has used funds donated by a Cameroonian living in Germany to purchase new equipment for manufacturing low-cost prostheses. Padisco Shoes in Bamenda, another city, manufactures and sells locally produced shoes thanks to WIDU funding. GIC Bellomar in Tembei’s city of Douala produces gels and bleaching agents from spoiled fruit, while another company uses banana stems to make packaging. 

Once a company receives approval to join the WIDU platform and to start receiving funds, it is sent the money in installments and must document how that money is being used with scanned receipts, visible to all participants. The donor donates without any profit or payback.

In addition to the money, recipients receive individual business coaching. Tembei has used this to improve her advertising strategy. She now relies almost exclusively on targeted online marketing, and has no complaints about demand for her products from the country’s growing middle classes.

Most recently, she purchased a computer-controlled milling machine, a compressor and, for $8,000, a laser machine for cutting and engraving thin workpieces made of wood, plastic or metal. She does the programming for the machine, and the drawings and animations for furniture and interior fittings, using a computer-aided design program at a small black desk in her office.

In addition to the donations from WIDU, Tembei has investors who have given her money in exchange for a share in her business. As shareholders, they get money back annually.

One such investor is Jacques Fokam. The 32-year-old engineer has been living in Germany for five years and works in quality control at BMW. He bought his shares in Mellow Group before the company was founded. 

“Sandra and I are very good friends,” he explains. “But above all, I was convinced by her business plan.” 

Fokam is one of ten investors. They are all Cameroonian and live abroad. Tembei knows most of them from her time in Egypt. There, with the help of a scholarship, she completed her master’s degree in materials science at the Egypt-Japan University of Science and Technology.

Fokam has not regretted his investment. The returns are good, and it makes him happy to create well-paid jobs in Cameroon. And he’s particularly pleased since it was his idea to propose Mellow Group to WIDU, once the company was established.

WIDU has been and continues to be very helpful for Tembei. But, with the Mellow Group’s increase in turnover — thanks to WIDU — in recent years, she has been able to make her last two purchases, the milling machine and the laser machine, with funds exclusively from her shareholders. “That was less complicated,” she says. The fact that her partners abroad are willing to invest even without the subsidy from WIDU is a good sign.

The house of the customer, who works in the accounting department of a large company, is hidden behind high walls with a metal gate. Their new kitchen is equipped with a substantial refrigerator, microwave, ice dispenser and large stove. A subcontractor is installing a marble worktop. The customer is not satisfied with the quality of the material. Tembei finds a compromise.

She switches fluently between English and French. After the defeat of the German Empire in the First World War, the British and French divided the former German colony of Cameroon between themselves. Even after independence in 1960, the divide between the Anglophone and Francophone populations remained. 

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To this day, the country is still heavily suffering from the legacy of colonial rule, and the two sides continue to block each other. In the north-west and south-west of the country, an Anglophone guerrilla group is waging a war of independence against the Francophone government.

Tembei’s father lives in the war zone. She rarely sees him. The same goes for her mother, who emigrated to the U.S. Emigration is not an option for Tembei. “I want to make a difference here, despite all the adversity,” she says, climbing back onto a motorcycle taxi to disappear into the traffic chaos on the disastrous roads. And that’s what she does.

Scrolling photos courtesy of Martin Egbert.