LOW BUSINESS DIVERSIFICATION TRIGGERS SMES’ MORBIDITY IN FRANCOPHONE CENTRAL AFRICA

Abstract

Business and economic diversification remain elusive in most African countries. The situation becomes even more critical when it comes to the francophone part of central Africa. Our Q4 2021 executive survey conducted in Cameroon, the leading economy of this sub-region, showed that only two percent of SME’s owners considered their business “well diversified”, while only four percent of them thought to be “highly diversified”. On the other side of the coin, while thirty percent admitted running their businesses with a “weak diversification” level, the entirely remaining sixty-four percent had “no diversification” at all. This significantly encumbers SMEs’ growth in this African sub-region, causing formal businesses of the SMEs class to dwarf in size over years. This paper hypothesizes that there exists an intimate correlation between low level of business diversification and persistent business morbidity and stagnation observed in francophone Central Africa. Its objective is to tackle the challenge of making the SME’s sphere of this sub-region prosperous.