Cameroon - Competitive Value Chains

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The development objective of the Competitive Value Chains Project is to contribute to the growth of the wood and tourism value chains in Cameroon by improving their competitiveness and the investment climate. The project will support specialized infrastructure investments, vocational training, policy reforms and direct support to firms through an innovation grant. There are four components to the project. The first component of the project is sustainable wood processing. The objective of this component is to increase, sustainably, the economic value added of the wood value chain in Cameroon (second and third 'stage processing). The project will support a critical mass of interventions in the wood value chain to trigger productive private investments and job creation. Although the project will promote wood products, the net environmental impact should be positive because it will promote the use of certified wood (coming from sustainable forestry exploitations), productive cutting techniques (allowing much more wood to be used from a given tree), secondary species (left abandoned today) and drying techniques (allowing the wood products to have a much longer shelf life). The second component of the project is ecotourism. This component, together with the third component tackling the cross-cutting investment climate issues, aims at addressing a critical mass of the constraints preventing the growth of the tourism industry in Cameroon. The core of the tourism development strategy is to focus on Cameroon's world class touristic assets to constitute a few and compelling touristic packages. The third component of the project is cross-cutting interventions to support competitiveness and investment. This component includes the following two subcomponents: (i) support to investment climate reforms; and ii) an innovation grant to help increase the competitiveness of small and medium enterprises in the wood and tourism value chains. The fourth component of the project is project coordination, monitoring and evaluation (M&E). The component will support the establishment, equipment and operations of a dedicated team (to be hired competitively by a specialized firm also selected competitively) within the Ministry of Economy, Planning and Regional Development (MINEPAT) reporting to a high level steering committee. The team will be responsible for overall project implementation, procurement, financial management, and M&E.