By DOH JAMES SONKEY
Youths have been empowered with knowledge and business contacts that will help them build entrepreneurial ecosystems in Cameroon in particular and Sub Sahara Africa in general. They were empowered at a 2-days Conference organized last March 29 and 30, 2018 at the Yaounde Mont Febe Hotel under the auspices of the Minister of Small and Medium Size Enterprises, Social Economy and Handicrafts, Laurent Serge Etoundi Ngoa.
Three female speakers; Nathalie Nkembu, Regina Huber and Monica McCoy were flown in from abroad to come and empower Cameroonian youths with entrepreneurial tools at the conference that held under the theme “building entrepreneurial ecosystems in Africa”.
The main organizer of the conference, Cameroonian born Nathalie Nkembu, CEO of Davmontes Ltd and Pregroth Ventures Ltd and editor in chief of Evolve Magazine justified her initiative with the fact that “I realized a gap which ought to be met because despite the fact that investors are interested in Africa, Startups in Africa need startup capital but cannot access it easily.”
She said the conference marks the first phase of the project whose phases has specific targets, “At this first phase, we are targeting policy makers and key actors in the ecosystem. In the upcoming months, we will commence the execution of the second phase with the launch of an incubator which has already been set up and equipped at the moment.”
Highlight of the conference included the launching of a book “Breaking the 90% rule of startup failure” written and published by Nathalie Nkembu “to ensure that even without prior knowledge of entrepreneurship, one can work their way through from the idea conception stage to a startup level.”
She added that the book will serve as guide to youths who are generally skeptical about taking business risk especially as it contains strategic startup and business growth hacks that are useful to all businesses irrespective of their level in the market.