Cameroon Company & Beneficial Ownership Directory

Analysis

What this data actually tells you about Cameroon

Cameroon’s economy was worth $51.33 billion in 2024 (World Bank), with GDP per capita at approximately $1,467 — above pre-pandemic levels but still below the 1986 historical peak of $1,980. Real GDP grew 3.5% in 2024 (up from 3.2% in 2023), helped by stronger cocoa prices, better cotton yields, and improved electricity supply for industry; growth is projected in the 3–4% range through 2025–2028 (World Bank Macro Poverty Outlook, 2025). Inflation ran at roughly 4.5% in 2024 and is forecast to ease toward 4% in 2025 and CEMAC’s 3% convergence target by 2026–2027. The currency is the Central African CFA franc (XAF), pegged to the euro and shared across the six-nation CEMAC monetary union, with monetary policy set by the regional central bank, BEAC. Key sectors are oil and gas, agriculture (cocoa, coffee, cotton, timber) and an emerging mining segment (iron ore, bauxite). Companies register via the RCCM (Registre du Commerce et du Crédit Mobilier), an OHADA-mandated commercial register administered by court registries in each regional capital, increasingly digitized through the GUCE one-stop trade/business portal. Counterparties verify a specific Cameroonian counterparty’s actual current RCCM registration status directly.

Cameroon is the largest and most diversified economy in CEMAC (Cameroon, Gabon, Chad, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Congo). The Port of Douala handles roughly 95% of Cameroon’s own trade and up to 80% of regional trade, serving as the principal maritime gateway for landlocked Chad and the Central African Republic. A second growth pole, the Kribi deep-sea port, opened its Phase II container terminal in May 2025 (a $650 million, 75%-China Eximbank-financed expansion built by China Communications Construction Company subsidiary CHEC), with a Phase III already planned; a new Kribi-linked standard-gauge railway to the Mbalam iron-ore fields is under construction, targeting completion around 2030. China is Cameroon’s largest single trading partner by value ($1.8 billion in 2024) and, via China Eximbank, its single largest external creditor — Cameroon paid CFA148.2 billion (approximately $267 million) in principal and interest to Eximbank in Q1 2024 alone. Cocoa beans, cocoa butter/fat/oil, crude oil, petroleum gas and sawn wood together generated about 77.5% of 2024 export earnings. Counterparties verify a specific counterparty’s actual current trade-route dependency and China-financing exposure directly.

Cameroon’s population is estimated near 30 million as of 2025. Headline unemployment is officially low (INS/ILO-modeled estimates around 3.5–3.9%), but this masks severe underemployment: the ILO estimates close to 90% of the labor force works in the informal economy, and INS surveys put average informal-sector worker income at roughly CFA83,409/month. The 2016-onset Anglophone Crisis continues to weigh heavily on the Northwest and Southwest regions: a World Bank-affiliated study (2013–2024 data) found Northwest economic output fell 28% and nighttime light intensity fell 25% over the conflict period, while over 334,000 people were internally displaced and 76,000+ had fled to Nigeria as of February 2025. In the Far North, Boko Haram-linked insecurity has displaced roughly 321,000 people internally and driven large-scale informal cross-border smuggling (an estimated CFA50.7 billion informal-trade deficit in 2024), even as some formal border markets have reopened and recovered. Paul Biya, 92, was re-elected to an eighth term on 12 October 2025 with an officially declared 53.66% of the vote; the result was contested, and post-election protests were met with a security-force response the government says killed 16 people, with other sources citing higher tolls. On a more constructive note, mobile money is expanding rapidly — MTN and Orange combined reported 11.4 million active mobile-money subscriptions in 2024, with sector revenue up 146% year-on-year to CFA135.84 billion. Counterparties verify a specific counterparty’s actual current regional-security exposure (Anglophone Crisis-linked or Far North-linked) and political-transition-linked risk directly rather than assume uniform national conditions.