Paper

The Microfinance Market of Cameroon: Analyzing Trends and Current Developments

Examining recent trends in Cameroon’s microfinance industry
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This paper analyzes the latest trends in Cameroon's microfinance market drawing on a comprehensive survey of MFIs, focus group discussions, peer reviews, and interviews with industry players within the country's banking landscape. Following the collapse of a major MFI in 2011, regulatory authorities became actively involved in the supervision of MFIs activities to scrutinize their activities with respect to basic prudential norms. Other trends include:

  • Microfinance landscape is dominated by class one institutions that control close to 86 percent of the market in terms of number of institutions and outlets.
  • Growing partnership between commercial banks and MFIs has increased the distribution of electronic cards to MFIs customers in 2011;
  • EB-ACCION, a partnership between ACCION International and Ecobank, remains the only major player that entered the market in 2010. It continues to benefit from the country wide banking platform already installed by Ecobank.

The microfinance market is expected to grow, due to customers acceptance of mobile money and microinsurance, expansionary strategies adopted by microfinance players, and favorable measures put in place by the government to protect depositors.

About this Publication

By Fotabong, L.
Published