U.S President Donald Trump, speaking at the World Economic Forum, says there is nothing wrong with colonization and the European countries that gave up their colonies made a mistake.
Today, let's revisit our 2023 list of the top 20 brands in Cameroon. Some of you thought we left out some and felt the ranking could have been better. We are working on the 2025 list, and we need your input. Tell which brands stood out to you in 2025 and why.
2023 TOP 20 BRANDS IN CAMEROON
See full list: poisesocial.com/2023/06/06/t…
7. Fokou: The dull yellow and oxblood logo represents the unassuming brand that has accompanied many everyday Cameroonians in building their homes. The extremely modest look of its stores reinforces the perception of the Bamilike in Cameroon - a people known for their quiet industry. Fokou was the first of its kind to bring building construction materials closer. Just like Total, Fokou has become a landmark.
8. Mayor: Mayor is the cooking oil par excellence. It is so coveted that during a shortage, it was being rationed at certain supermarkets -2 bottles per household.
9. EquinoxTV: EquinoxTV is “the voice of the people.” At 6 pm, you will see bike riders parked on a street corner watching the news by Equinox. With numerous government sanctions on its back, it represents the oppressed.
10. Kadji: Kadji represents hard work, resilience, and generational wealth. It is the prime example of Cameroonian excellence, hence c’est le champagne du Cameroun, mais il a fallu du temps.
11. CRTV: Once the meaning of TV in Cameroon, CRTV is now only known to be the voice of the state. Visiting its headquarters will give you an accurate picture of Cameroon. The beautiful piece of architecture on the outside becomes a run-down brothel once you step in. Its brand tag could be “innovation dies
12. 33 Export: The self-proclaimed No. 1 supporter of Cameroonian football has a reputation for being one of the strongest beers in the country. It represents the pain and joy of Cameroonians. Its affiliation with Cameroonian football completes the cycle. This beer is never out of stock.
13. Canal2: It is arguably the biggest television media company in Cameroon. It also hosts the most prestigious entertainment awards ceremony - the Canal 2’OR. If serving two masters at a time were a company, it would be Canal2. It is a brand that is equally for the people as it is for the state.
14. Azur: For many households in Cameroon, Azur is all things soap -used to clean floors, for laundry, and to bathe.
15. Touristique: it revolutionized luxury public transport in Cameroon and became the standard. Everyone who uses luxury interurban transport will remember how it started. Even those who have become loyal to other travel agencies know who the boss is.
16. Razel: It is the road construction company that has somehow not been frustrated by the Cameroonian government and probably the only one not controlled by someone tied to the Cameroonian government. Razel is the last resort; it is the company that will figure it out.
17. Yango: What Touristique did for interurban transport, Yango has done for inner city transport. YANGO means winning where everyone else failed. Many entrepreneurs tried to build the Uber of Cameroon before YANGO, but all failed.
18. Hysacam: Hysacam’s brand tagline could be “we are in this mess together.” No matter how hard the company works, it never manages to keep any place clean.
19. Tradex: Tradex’s signature rounded-edge parallelogram roof, sitting on cone pillars, constitutes a huge part of its brand. Without the Logo and the oxblood-cream white finish, a Tradex petrol station is easy to identify even during construction. Rumored to be backed by the government, its reputation follows suit.
20. Afriland: The grey and smoked white tiles together with the signature pattern that adorn its buildings will make the bank stand out from a row of buildings. With a CEO who later became Minister of Finance, the bank has a reputation for prudence. Just like Kadji, it is another beacon of Cameroonian excellence.
-PoiseNewsDesk
17 PHRASES ONLY A CAMEROONIAN WILL UNDERSTAND
Cameroon is not a country. It’s a graduate-level course in adaptive intelligence, taught entirely through vibes, delay, and improvisation. The country has an unwritten instruction manual, one that you personally piece together by the time you reach 30 -only then will you understand its institutions, politics, or even why a file can disappear in a building that has not moved in 43 years.
1. “Le Cameroun c’est le Cameroun”
This is advanced situational awareness. It means adjusting expectations, recalibrating hope, and proceeding creatively. It’s the mental seatbelt we put on before interacting with institutions that may or may not exist.
It means you have accepted reality as it is, not as the press release says it is. This is how the song sounds when it is released. Not the one you heard in the studio.
Only amateurs fight systems head-on. Experts adjust expectations and move diagonally.
2. “Man go do how?”
Basically, why stress when resignation is cheaper? This phrase prevents ulcers, fistfights, and unnecessary belief in systems that have already shown you who they are. Acceptance is sometimes wisdom in flip-flops. This is your blood pressure monitor beeping.
3. N’est-ce pas le pays les appartient?
It is not bitterness. It is clarity. This is how citizens identify power structures without diagrams. It’s political science expressed through sighing.
“N’est-ce pas le pays les appartient?” is not jealousy. It’s anthropology. A quiet acknowledgment that citizenship has tiers, and that some come with police escorts and immunity bundles.
Kukuruku Bopda tin!
4. You think say you fit? For this very Cameroon?
Our unofficial startup-accelerator filter. If your idea survives this sentence, it might survive the market. If it doesn’t, better to drown it early—with beer.
This is why bars double as incubators, beer fuels innovation, and discouragement supplies market research.
5. “Si on t’explique le Cameroun”
This is a compression algorithm. Why waste 40 minutes explaining nonsense when one sentence can capture the full absurdity?
This phrase contains corruption, incompetence, irony, and exhaustion. It is a full documentary condensed into six words. Used when logic collapses, and irony takes over. Economical. Elegant. Complete.
6. Au moins on est mieux que le Tchad
Comparative optimism. A national coping metric. We may be struggling, but we are struggling with respect. Context and perspective matter, even when they are unhealthy.
7. Wait Your Turn
A phrase that teaches patience, hierarchy, and spiritual endurance. Waiting is not inefficiency; it’s a rite of passage. The power of this statement became evident in the artist KRYS M’s creation of one of the country’s biggest hit songs. Woyooh, à chacun sa chance.
‘Chacun sa chance’ essentially asks everyone to wait for luck. You are not unqualified; you are just unlucky. You are not talented; you are just lucky.
8. Force revient à la loi / l’ordre régnera
The shortest constitution ever written. No ambiguity. No footnotes. Everything is clear once the uniform arrives. It’s governance through intimidation, rebranded as stability.
9. Vous voulez tourner le Cameroun en Libye?
It is the national trauma response. This is fear wearing patriotism. Stability is valued here, even when it limps. We’ve seen worse places, so we cling tightly to familiar pain. Predictable suffering feels safer than uncertain freedom. Change must come quietly, gently, preferably tomorrow.
10. Petit frère, talk fine
The unofficial lubricant of bureaucracy. Why shout when you can negotiate? This phrase oils stuck systems better than any reform paper.
11. Tu crois que tu souffres plus que qui?
Suffering is communal. Complaints are competitive. This phrase underscores that pain is neither unique nor exceptional.
12. You feel say you get sense pass who?
Intellectual humility, enforced socially. Expertise must be disguised as jokes or silence. Confidence is permitted only with approval.
13. Qui est ton parrain?
A networking question, not an insult. Cameroon runs on relationships, not résumés. Knowing who matters as much as knowing how.
14. Impossible n’est pas Camerounais
Not a lie. A scheduling philosophy. Things will happen eventually, under pressure, chaos, and divine intervention.
15. On supporte seulement / Allons seulement
Radical acceptance. The emotional cousin of “man go do how.” Used when resistance is expensive, and hope is on backorder.
16. Abeg give me réseau
This is not laziness. It’s realism. Networks move faster than merit here. Asking is smarter than pretending otherwise.
17. Tu connais qui je suis?
This is a social experiment -a high-risk bluffing technique. Sometimes it opens doors. Sometimes it opens handcuffs. Either way, it’s said with chest by people who might or might not have an uncle somewhere.
When you understand all of these phrases, you are no longer learning how Cameroon works; you are learning how people work within Cameroon. These expressions govern ego, ambition, hierarchy, and survival in social spaces where intelligence must be carefully rationed.
When rules are flexible and outcomes unpredictable, people do not panic, they translate. Cameroon may not always explain itself, but it communicates clearly to those who are listening.
Cameroon does not reward loud intelligence. It rewards navigational intelligence.
These phrases are not signs of weakness; they are evidence of a society that has learned to move sideways, bend rules without breaking completely, and survive contradictions with humor intact. Understanding them does not make you cynical. It makes you local.
Outsiders hear resignation in these words. Insiders hear experience. These phrases do not stop progress; they explain how people stay sane long enough to attempt it. Cameroon teaches realism early. Optimism comes later, after you’ve learned how not to be surprised.
No certificate. Just awareness.
WHY DIASPORA CAPITAL SUCCEEDS QUIETLY OR FAILS LOUDLY
Many Cameroonians in the diaspora are eager to return home to invest. The intensity of that interest tends to rise and fall every three to five years, but the desire itself rarely disappears. For some, Cameroon remains the ecosystem they feel culturally and socially equipped to navigate. For others, the motivation is geopolitical. For many, it is shaped by a long-running narrative promoted by international development institutions that Africa is the next frontier.
I was once firmly in the latter two camps.
It was around 2014. Facebook was coming of age, and social media was collapsing distances. We were suddenly plugged into success stories from everywhere. Venture capital was flowing. Startup initiatives were getting funded. Dreamers like me were everywhere. It felt like primetime. You either jumped in then or risked being left behind.
That same year, Forbes Africalaunched its 30 Under 30 list, spotlighting young African innovators, entrepreneurs, and creatives “reshaping the continent’s future.” In introducing the 2015 list, Mfonobong Nsehe confidently described an entrepreneurial boom sweeping the continent – young Africans solving socio-economic problems, creating jobs, and building fortunes in the process.
Culture seemed to be moving in the same direction. In Nigeria, Don Jazzy and D’banj had returned from the UK and transformed the entertainment industry. P-Square had collaborated with Rick Ross. Akon was playing the plug. In Cameroon, Jovi was revitalizing hip-hop by rooting it in local language and identity. The message was subtle yet powerful: you could come home, stay relevant, and win.
Social media promised distribution without gatekeepers. Traditional media no longer controlled access. Ideas could travel cheaply and quickly. Nothing could stop us but ourselves—or so we believed.
Local entrepreneurs were not left out. In Cameroon, where over 80 percent of economic activity is informal, many young founders began to emerge and imagine scaling beyond one- or two-person microenterprises. The CEO title was free for adoption. Amid this excitement, there seemed to be a special place reserved for the diaspora. The assumption was that they returned with more capital – financial, social, and intellectual.
In 2016, Miranda Oben, a Cameroonian engineer based in Germany, founded The Returnees Project to help the diaspora return to or invest in Cameroon. The word ‘returnee’ carried the message. It suggested Africa had changed and was finally safe for its voluntary refugees to come home.
Many did. Others invested in those who returned. Some lasted months. Others survived a few years. But ten years later, the pattern is clear. Much of that optimism has evaporated. Many ambitious ventures have become guest houses, restaurants, and nightlife spots. And the same painful question keeps resurfacing: why do so many of us return home to invest, only to fail?
That question recently resurfaced in a public exchange between Roland Fomumdam and Atem Cael, each offering a different diagnosis.
Roland Fomumdam argues that many returnees fail because they operate alone. They bring back a Western instinct to own everything, control everything, and assume all the risk themselves. In Cameroon, he says, this is a structural mistake – businesses survive through relationships. He points to family businesses that collapse after their founders die, solo farms that never scale, and promising projects that quietly disappear. By contrast, he highlights how Lebanese, Chinese, Nigerians, and Europeans embed themselves in networks, pool resources, and build durable value.
Atem Cael strongly disagrees that individualism is the core problem. He argues that the West thrives on ecosystems and teamwork, and that Africans who succeed abroad understand this well. Drawing on costly personal experience, he concludes that Cameroon functions less as an economic system and more as a political one. Relationships that matter are often political, not communal. He cites examples such as Dangote, La Pasta Cameroon, and Africa Construction, noting the years of lobbying required to secure licenses against incumbents like CIMENCAM. Foreign companies succeed, he argues, because they align with power. Local partnerships often fail because of entitlement, weak institutions, and misaligned incentives.
These views may seem opposed, but together they reveal a crucial truth: Cameroon is not friendly to naïve experimentation or loud disruption. Whether one emphasizes ecosystem-building or political realism, the conclusion remains the same. The environment rewards those who understand existing systems and punishes those who try to reinvent them without protection.
This is where the missing piece lies: the business model chosen.
In Cameroon, 0-to-1 business models rarely work. Starting something entirely new – new consumer behavior, a new category, new infrastructure, or new regulatory logic – creates friction everywhere. It demands patient capital, political insulation, and years of loss absorption. Most entrepreneurs simply do not have these advantages. When such ventures fail, the blame is often placed on corruption, culture, or the country itself. In reality, it is a model-terrain mismatch.
By contrast, 1-to-n models travel farther. These are businesses that replicate, extend, or quietly professionalize what already works. They plug into known demand and familiar habits rather than trying to transform them.
Import and distribution work because demand already exists. Trade and aggregation align naturally with the informal economy. In fashion, bespoke tailoring succeeds, while building consumer brands from scratch struggles. Even technology performs best when it stays quiet – used as backend infrastructure rather than as headline-grabbing disruption. Highly visible, ideology-driven, venture-style models consistently struggle. Large-scale manufacturing without state backing and burn-rate startups attract resistance long before they achieve stability.
The pattern is clear. Capital wins when it is patient, boring, and disciplined. The most successful investors do not arrive with fanfare or frame their work as saving the country. They replicate proven models and grow quietly. Innovation still exists, but it is incremental and contextual.
Roland is right that isolation is dangerous. Atem is right that politics cannot be ignored. The synthesis is this: quiet execution in non-disruptive businesses is what generally works.
Coming home should not be emotional.
It should not be ideological.
It should be strategic.
And in Cameroon, strategy begins with choosing a business that fits the system—not one that tries to fight it.
U.S. ORDERS WITHDRAWAL FROM DOZENS OF INTERNATIONAL BODIES, INCLUDING KEY AFRICA-FACING INSTITUTIONS
The United States has ordered an immediate withdrawal from dozens of international and multilateral organizations following a review initiated last year by an Executive Order. The decision, formalized in a presidential memorandum addressed to all executive departments and agencies, directs the U.S. government to cease participation in or funding for a wide range of United Nations and non-UN bodies.
The memorandum names 35 non-UN organizations and 31 UN entities spanning climate policy, migration, democracy support, development finance, energy transition, gender equality, peacebuilding, and scientific research. Collectively, they form much of the architecture that coordinates international cooperation on development and governance issues.
Among the non-UN bodies are global forums on climate science and biodiversity, renewable energy coalitions, democracy and rule-of-law institutes, and international development law organizations. The UN list includes several core ECOSOC commissions, funds, and specialized offices that operate across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
While the withdrawals do not automatically dissolve these organizations, the loss of U.S. funding, technical support, and political backing is likely to affect their scale, influence, and long-term sustainability.
Several of the entities named in the memorandum play a direct role in African development, governance, climate adaptation, and peacebuilding.
Most prominent among them is the Economic Commission for Africa, a UN regional body that supports African governments on economic policy, trade integration, statistics, and sustainable development. The commission has been central to continental initiatives, including the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and climate-resilient growth strategies.
The memorandum also orders withdrawal from the Office of the Special Adviser on Africa, which serves as a coordination and advocacy hub linking African priorities to the UN system and international partners.
Institutions linked to peace, justice, and democratic governance in African contexts are also affected. These include the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, which works extensively on electoral systems and constitutional reform across the continent, and the International Development Law Organization, a key provider of legal reform and justice-sector support in fragile and post-conflict states.
Climate and environmental governance bodies with significant engagement in Africa are also on the list. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Renewable Energy Agency, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change underpin climate finance flows, adaptation planning, and energy-transition strategies across African countries.
Social and demographic institutions, such as the UN Population Fund, the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, and the UN Human Settlements Programme, are also included, and all maintain extensive field operations across Africa.
For African governments and civil society organizations, the decision raises questions about funding gaps, program continuity, and shifting geopolitical alignments. While many of these institutions rely on a broad donor base, U.S. withdrawal may reduce leverage, slow reforms, or accelerate efforts to diversify partnerships toward Europe, Asia, and emerging multilateral financiers.
The administration has emphasized that the review process is not complete, signaling that further changes to U.S. engagement with international institutions may still be forthcoming.
See full list of organizations affected:- poisesocial.com/2026/01/08/u…
Cameroon is investing heavily in innovation hubs, digital skills, and startup programs to tackle youth unemployment. On paper, the ambition is impressive: thousands of startups to be supported, jobs to be created, and a new generation trained in digital skills.
After years of watching pitch sessions, hackathons, and hub programs, a pattern emerges: plenty of ideas, very little traction.
At the same time, government bodies are importing digital solutions, including recent efforts to formalize motorcycle taxi services using EU-funded digital tools.
What would change if the state acted as a first customer and startups were built around guaranteed demand?
In this piece, @norbert_foy explores why innovation without coordination produces noise instead of impact, and why aligning public problems with local builders may be the missing link between skills, jobs, and real economic transformation.
Full article:- poisesocial.com/2025/12/22/h…
