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(Camer.be- Yaoundé) – The president of the African Economic Intelligence Monitoring Center (Cavie) speaks about the Francophone Economic Intelligence Festival which will be held on November 2 in Yaoundé.

President, only a few days left, and the Cavie will organize the Fief. How is Cameroon preparing for this event?

With gravity and sobriety. If we come to talk about a festival, it is above all to draw the attention of public authorities and the business world to the urgency of public policies and operational units of economic intelligence both at the level national as well as at the scale of economic actors taken individually. The exacerbation of competition in our markets is pressing on us. In truth, if there was no emergency, we would not talk about it in public for the simple reason that no normally constituted competitor exposes his strategy, his methods, or his tools. Unless there is a maneuver aimed at distracting or deceiving the adversary. Moreover, never forget that economic intelligence is an intelligence activity, certainly legal, but sensitive for our States and our companies, which must be protected.

What will be the innovations of this 2nd edition?

The main innovations of this edition lie in the involvement of the Cameroonian government, international organizations and diplomatic representations. This is the place to salute, at the level of public authorities, the remarkable contribution of the Cameroonian Ministry of Economy, Planning and Regional Development, whose number one, Mr. Alamine Ousmane May, signs the preface of the white paper which includes all the work and recommendations of this second edition of the FIEF. Our gratitude and congratulations also go to the Ministry of SMEs, Solidarity Economy and Crafts, as well as to the Ministry of Tourism and Leisure who are involved in the success of this international event to the extent of their possibilities. Finally, the participation of the embassies of Congo, France and Tunisia, in particular; as well as the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) are an extremely strong signal of the the growing interest of these leading players in economic intelligence.

This is about the Francophone Economic Intelligence Festival. How did we get here and what solutions will these meetings bring to the economic intelligence ecosystem?

We started from two observations. The first is that Africa is the future of the Francophonie. Mathematically, demographically speaking. From 321 million today, the population of this community will reach 700 million in 2050. More than 85% of these individuals will live on the black continent. The second observation is that this French-speaking community, if it were as economically integrated as its Commonwealth-type competitors, it could become more competitive, more attractive and more conducive to the well-being of its citizens. Faced with the analysis of this double observation, we estimated that when we are a reference center in Africa in terms of training, certification and the implementation of monitoring and economic intelligence and due diligence systems, we takes responsibility. This is how the Francophone Economic Intelligence Festival was born. Its mission is to methodically mobilize French-speaking expertise from five continents to boost the competitiveness of the French-speaking area through findings, analyzes and recommendations. FIEF2023 will work to boost the competitiveness of French-speaking territories through territorial intelligence methods, techniques and tools that can be immediately used by central decision-makers and local elected officials.

What is the state of play in relation to the penetration of matter in Cameroon?

If it takes great care to answer this question – precisely for the reasons mentioned above – it is clear that at the moment when I speak to you, loudly – ​​it is clear that at the moment when I speak to you, the The State of Cameroon does not yet have a real public policy in terms of monitoring and economic intelligence, even less a dedicated national system. It should be noted, however, that CAVIE has already trained the parliamentary attachés of the National Assembly of Cameroon, at the same time as their Congolese counterparts, in parliamentary intelligence. In the business world, CAVIE and GICAM (Cameroon Inter-Employment Group) have already signed a strategic partnership which remains to be implemented. On the scale of private companies, taken individually, we can be satisfied that major players like Boissons du Cameroun, a subsidiary of the Castel group in Cameroon; Sic Cacaos, subsidiary of Barry Callebaut; Chanas Assurance, Afriland First Group, BICEC, the Autonomous Port of Douala, Crédit Foncier du Cameroun, CRTV, Cameroun Tribune, Vision 4, Mutations, to name but a few, have already sent their executives and managers for training to CAVIE. The latter go through short, intensive and certifying programs in monitoring, economic intelligence, due diligence, human intelligence, influence of public decision-making, risk management or crisis communication. They are the ambassadors of economic intelligence within local companies.

Can Cameroonians get to know the man who wears Cavie better?

In addition to chairing CAVIE, I am founder of Knowdys Consulting Groupe, head of the Doing Business in Africa Program at CentraleSupélec Paris since 2012, formerly of the Paris School of Economic Warfare and the Executive Doctorate in Public Affairs of the Paris Dauphine-PSL University. I am the author of several works including “70 chronicles of economic warfare in Africa”.