ENABLE YOUTH CAMEROON AND STAKEHOLDERS TRAINED FOR MORE RESULTS

Understanding funding systems and risk sharing mechanisms were some of the reasons why at the end of the month of March 2019, ENABLE Youth Cameroon received Mr. Nixon Bugu and Mr. Clement Yuyun, AFTA consultants from Kenya and Cameroon. For two days, from March 26 to 27, 2019, Nixon and Clement facilitated capacity building sessions in Funding Systems and Risk Sharing Mechanism, with a focus to the agricultural value chains in some African countries and in Cameroon.

On March 26, 2019, the Coordination Unit of ENABLE Youth Cameroon, the National Coordinator of the Agricultural Value Chain Development Project (AVC_DP) as well as the Finance and Monitoring and Evaluation teams of AVC_DP were gathered on the campus of IITA Cameroon for a capacity building. The main objective of the training sessions was to provide the participants with the skills necessary to enable them to understand some banking and funding systems in African agriculture, the success stories of risk sharing mechanism in African countries, and how the lessons learned from previous experiences could be adapted to the Cameroonian system by ENABLE Youth Cameroon.

The one-day training was full of exchanges, reflections and learnings for all participants. It helped to exchange on how ENABLE Youth Cameroon could mobilize stakeholders, with the aim of putting in place a bold, interesting and efficient funding and risk sharing mechanism that will encourage the banks as well as the financial institutions to fund the agripreneurs interns trained by ENABLE Youth Cameroon. As future agripreneurs, the interns of EYC will work along the agricultural value chains in Cameroon, though the necessity of putting in place a funding mechanism which will facilitate the creation of viable and sustainable agribusinesses.

One day later, on March 27, 2019, Nixon and Clement visited some of the Youth AgriBusiness Incubation Centers (YABICs) in the Centre region of Cameroon. They started with the YABIC of IITA Cameroon, where the agripreneurs were lucky to receive a small training on the importance of agriculture in the growth of the Cameroonian economy, the financial environment of Cameroon and how some risk sharing mechanisms could be adapted in Cameroon, for a better implementation of agribusinesses.

After the discussion in the YABIC of Nkolbisson, Nixon and Clement also went to a field visit to the YABIC of Obala, where they had an exchange with the agripreneurs interns. After the training session, miss Catherine Lembe, an agripreneur from the YABIC of Nkolbisson explains how useful it shall be to her: “As an entrepreneur who is doing mushroom, this session enabled me to visualize some of the mistakes I used to do. I now understand how I can correct them.”

The capacity building sessions were full of learning, as they help ENABLE Youth Cameroon and AVC_DP to better understand the financing system and to prepare solutions to overcome the barriers. It is worth mentioning that Mr. Nixon Bugu and Mr. Clement Yuyun are advisors to the President of the African Development Bank on financial issues, and they are accompanying ENABLE Youth Sudan in the implementation of their Program.