About GEN in Cameroon

GEN began working in Cameroon in 2009 when it partnered with the Youth Business Center (YBC) to launch its inaugural Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) campaign. This was one of the first GEW campaigns in Africa. From the outset, the campaign mobilized dozens of partner organizations and reached national audiences. During the following year, the annual GEW campaign drew a broad coalition of supporters including Brasseries du Cameroun, the British High Commission, and the U.S. Embassy. GEW Cameroon quickly grew into a national movement advancing entrepreneurship across the country.

By 2017, the government had embraced entrepreneurship across its ministries and Cameroon’s corporations were launching their own startup initiatives. This momentum led the country’s ecosystem leaders to establish a local GEN affiliate, GEN Cameroon, in 2018 to conduct year-round programming. Led by Gilles Lewat, an entrepreneurship expert who founded YBC in 2005, and Alphonse Nafack, GEN Cameroon provides training, mentorship, and resources to entrepreneurs.

In July 2021, GEN launched its first Startup Huddle chapter in Douala, organized by Olivier Ngwe with support from Jokkolabs Douala and 2F Consulting. The chapter provides entrepreneurs with structured peer-to-peer mentoring and connects the local ecosystem to GEN's global network. GEN has connected Cameroon’s founders to global opportunities through the Entrepreneurship World Cup (EWC), giving founders a pathway to international competition and investment. At the 2024 national finals, Ekose-Rx, a pharmaceutical-aggregator platform founded by Monica Mesame Ewang, took top prize. Energy+Associates, led by Thierry Thomas Fouda Onambele, won an earlier edition. Beyond that competition, GEN has opened doors for other Cameroonian founders through the GEN Starters Club Diagnose for example was spotlighted at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Istanbul, and visitor exchanges with the State of Michigan and GEN's team in Indonesia have created new market opportunities.

GEN in the Cameroon organized the 2025 edition of GEW under the theme 'Productive Entrepreneurship and Opportunities,' which featured events across each of Cameroon's ten regions and hosted women’s entrepreneurship activities at Djeuga Palace. Hands-on programming for young people during GEW included a site visit to Kem CARE, a natural hair care producer in Douala, and a school outreach session at Mfou Technical High School led by the National Employment Fund. The session introduced young people to entrepreneurship and drew enthusiastic participation from students, teachers, and administrators alike. The campaign culminated with a closing event in Yaoundé, presided over by Minister Achille Bassilekin III.

Cameroon’s government has played a vital role in GEN’s global gatherings since 2012. Ministers Louis-Paul Motaze and Laurent Serge Etoundi Ngoa participated in GEN’s ministerial meetings. Minister Bassilekin III, Minister of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, Social Economy and Handicrafts (MINPMEESA) deepened the relationship. MINPMEESA now anchors the national GEW campaign, and connects it to Cameroon’s broader economic development agenda.

In addition to collaborating on the annual GEW campaign, GEN connected MINPMEESA with its research community and the Global Enterprise Registration (GER) initiative. In partnership with UNCTAD and the U.S. Department of State, GER speeds up the new business registration process and reduces administrative requirements. In 2016, the World Investment Forum recognized Cameroon’s MyBusiness.cm single-window platform as a leading business-registration reformer at its conference in Nairobi, Kenya. The platform has since enabled more than 25,000 new enterprises to join the formal sector.

GEN actively contributes to an increasingly dynamic policy environment in Cameroon. In July 2025, for example, GEN Cameroon advised on government programming aimed at supporting 22 enterprises emerging from public-sector incubations. MINPMEESA officials are also active participants in GEN’s Startup Nations community, which meets in person at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress.

Cameroon has steadily raised its profile at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC). During GEC Riyadh 2022, GEN Cameroon organized an economic mission of more than 40 delegates led by Minister Bassilekin III. The delegation drew together officials from MINPMEESA and other ministries, private-sector leaders, incubators, and select startups. In 2025, Gilles Lewat led a delegation to GEC Indiana, where he developed cross-border partnerships. Building on this momentum, GEN Cameroon in 2026 secured strategic alliances with the HELIOS POWER Foundation and HIS Cameroon. It also secured support to sponsor the participation of Cameroonian ecosystem leaders at the next GEC.

GEN maintains extensive relationships with key Cameroonian ecosystem stakeholders. These include the public sector ministries MINPMEESA, MINEPAT, MINFI, MINESUP, MINRESI, MINJEC, and the Agency for the Promotion of SMEs (APME), and private sector innovation hubs such as Jokkolabs Douala, 2F Consulting, Bamenda’s K7 Business Network, Katika, Wadivo, and Business France Cameroon. GEN Cameroon collaborates regionally across Central Africa, having taken part in the AfriLabs–Ukamili hybrid regional workshop convened with the Lubumbashi innovation hub CINOLU.

Jonathan Ortmans, the founder and president of GEN, remembered Gilles Lewat (who passed away in 2025) as “a pioneer and leading light of Cameroon’s entrepreneurship ecosystem,” crediting him with helping GEN understand the needs of central Africa. Under the leadership of Alphonse Nafack and Fabrice Fernand Fangwa, with the active support of Cameroon’s ecosystem leaders, GEN in Cameroon continues to extend its work into secondary cities and into school- and university-based entrepreneurship clubs across Cameroon’s ten regions, carrying forward the vision of connecting Cameroonian founders to global markets and opportunities.