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 Africa launched 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.
- Norbert K. Foy