Cameroon Telecommunications (Camtel), the country’s incumbent telecom operator, announced that it will sign a partnership agreement on May 29 in Douala with the Cameroon Business Group (Gecam), the country’s largest employers’ organization. The three-year agreement aims to improve access to reliable, secure, and business-focused digital solutions for Gecam members, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises and very small businesses.

Under the partnership, Camtel will provide secure internet connectivity, interconnection services between business sites, fixed and mobile telephony solutions, data security services, and data hosting at its data center. These services will be offered to Gecam member companies at preferential rates. According to Camtel, the initiative comes at a time when business competitiveness increasingly depends on companies’ ability to digitize operations, protect data, and maintain reliable connectivity.

“In an environment where competitiveness is closely tied to digital transformation, data security, and connectivity, this partnership seeks to align national digital infrastructure with the practical needs of the private sector,” the company said.

A Long-Standing Digital Gap

Several studies and industry reports show that Cameroon continues to lag behind in business access to digital services, largely because of high costs and inconsistent service quality. According to research by London-based Cable.co, which publishes annual comparisons of broadband internet prices worldwide, the average cost of one gigabyte of data in Cameroon stood at $1.63 in 2023. At that level, internet services for businesses were three to four times more expensive than in Rwanda and Ghana.

Beyond pricing, companies also face recurring disruptions linked to fiber-optic cable cuts and frequent power outages. Telecom operators regularly cite these issues as major causes of service interruptions and poor network performance.

The Competitiveness Committee at the Ministry of Economy has previously identified these challenges as factors that continue to weigh on the competitiveness of Cameroonian businesses.

Beyond the Agreement

For that reason, the significance of the Camtel-Gecam partnership extends well beyond the signing ceremony itself. The key issue is whether it can deliver more affordable services and better network reliability.

At the center of that challenge is Camtel’s national fiber-optic infrastructure, whose repeated outages often disrupt electronic communications across the country. If the partnership succeeds in improving service stability while lowering costs, it could help narrow a digital gap that has long limited the competitiveness of Cameroon’s private sector.

Source: Sbbc