SKILLS AND WORK INFORMAL SECTOR CAMEROON

INTERNATIONAL TRAINING CENTRE
OF THE INTERNATIONAL LABOUR ORGANIZATION
OCCASIONAL PAPERS
SKILLS AND WORK IN
THE INFORMAL SECTOR
evidence from
Yaoundé, Cameroon
by Fred FLUITMAN and
Joseph Jean Marie MOMO
TURIN, ITALY, DECEMBER 2001

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SKILLS AND WORK IN THE INFORMAL SECTOR: Evidence from Yaoundé, Cameroon
by Fred Fluitman and Joseph Jean Marie Momo
First edition 2002
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Acknowledgements
SKILLS AND WORK IN THE INFORMAL SECTOR
This paper, presenting the results of interviews with selected micro-entrepreneurs con-ducted
in December 2000, is, in a way, an outcome of work done inWest Africa, notably in
Togo, by various people, more than ten years ago1. That is to say, the research idea underlying
the effort, and the manner in which the fieldwork was approached and conducted, this time in
Yaoundé, Cameroon, have borrowed heavily from that experience.
Work of the sort is, naturally, a team effort, with each of various roles being critical in
yielding a solid product. Thus, without the willingness of hundreds of Yaoundé entrepre-neurs
to share their time and answer the various questions posed to them, the project would
surely have failed to come to fruition. Their enthusiastic collaboration is fondly remem-bered
and applauded. The fieldwork was planned and managed by Joseph Jean Marie
Momo, Programme Officer at the ILO’s Multi-disciplinary Team for Central Africa
(EMAC) in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Mr. Momo was also responsible for sampling and all as-pects
of data processing. The continued support of EMAC director Françoise Achio is
gratefully acknowledged. Fred Fluitman, Manager of the Employment and Skills Develop-ment
Programme, at the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organi-zation
(ILO), inTurin, Italy, initiated and directed the project. He is the author of the present
report.
Nicolas Serrière and Benedetta Jaretti, both on the staff of ILO’s Turin Centre, pro-vided
a considerable amount of research assistance, particularly in handling survey data for
final analysis and inclusion in the report. Mr. Serrière also assisted in preparing tables and
graphs, and in the editing of this report.
Work on the ground in Yaoundé, was conceived, in part, as an “on-the-job” learning
exercise. The interviews were conducted, after two days of intensive training, by 15 inter-viewers
and two controllers, all final year students of the Yaoundé-based Institut
Sous-régional de Statistique et Economie Appliquée (ISSEA). Their prior experience and
their seriousness have certainly contributed to the quality of the data obtained. Mr. Robert
Ngonthe, Chief of the Department of Studies and Applied Research at ISSEA, ably organ-ised
their involvement and also acted as a survey supervisor.
The training of the interviewers benefited from a financial contribution by the Italian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Other resources for the project were available, inter alia, from the
budget of a larger research project on vocational education and training in Sub-Saharan Africa,
directed and financed by theWorld Bank, and implemented by the ILO Turin Centre.
iii
1 See: Fluitman, Fred, and Xavier Oudin, Skill Acquisition and Work in Micro-enterprises: Evidence from Lomé,
Togo, International Labour Office, Vocational Training Branch, Geneva, December 1991. The Lomé results
were integrated into: Birks, Steve, Fred Fluitman, Xavier Oudin and Clive Sinclair, Skills Acquisition in
Micro-enterprises: Evidence from West Africa , A joint study of the World Bank, the ILO, and the Development
Centre of the OECD, Development Centre Documents, OECD, Paris, 1994 (also published in French).

Executive Summary
The present study of skills and work inYaoundé, Cameroon, is mainly based on inter-views
with a stratified sample of almost 700 micro-entrepreneurs, men and women, in-volved
in one of twelve common trades, exercised in what is known, including in national
statistics, as the informal sector of the economy. The main objective of the effort was to
learn from what these entrepreneurs had to say about themselves and their enterprises, and
in particular about their distinct career paths and the skills they had acquired along the way.
It is believed that insights thus obtained may help in the design and implementation of mea-sures
intended to improve the functioning of both training systems and micro-enterprises,
and consequently enhance their contribution to meeting national economic and social ob-jectives.
While the results of the survey are not representative for the informal sector as a
whole, they concern a broad cross section of micro-enterprises other than the shops of re-tailers.
Undertaking the survey, with respondents selected on the basis of area sampling,
confirmed that Yaoundé’s informal sector is massive, and not necessarily ailing through-out.
Survey findings further showed, unambiguously, that enterprises of the informal sector
variety, while surely having things in common, are also characterised by great diversity.
The entrepreneurs responding in the survey proved to be young, as is the country’s
population as a whole. However, hardly any teenagers were found among the sample. Re-spondents
were, on average, a few years older than those employed by them in various ca-pacities,
but they did not appear to employ children (which doesn’t mean, of course, that
child labour does not exist in Yaoundé). Three out of four respondents were not born in
Yaoundé, and half the sample had grown up in a family of farmers. Gender-based differ-ences
among entrepreneurs were noteworthy, but not surprising in the sense of unexpected.
The survey brought out clear evidence of occupational segmentation, based on gender, as
well as on the basis of other, no doubt related variables such as education level, family
background and age.
As concerns education, almost all of the sample entrepreneurs had completed pri-mary
school, and many had obtained, in addition, one or another type of secondary school
diploma. On average, respondents were clearly better educated than the population as a
whole, and than their co-workers. The latter finding is interesting, as other, similar surveys
had shown that younger workers, notably apprentices were often better educated than their,
older, bosses, presumably because of progress made over the years in education provision.
A surprisingly large proportion of entrepreneurs (45 per cent) also had undergone a period
of pre-employment vocational training. More often than not, such training was of relatively
v

ITC ILO OCCASIONAL PAPER
long duration, and provided for a fee, in private rather than in government-sponsored train-ing
institutions. Most entrepreneurs, men and women, had, furthermore, been apprentices,
normally in the trade they were now practising, and usually for a period of two to three
years. Apprenticeship was uncommon only in the restaurant trade. Asked to state their most
useful education or training experience, apprenticeship came out best in six of the twelve
trades, and in second place in three others.
All enterprises in the sample had a fixed location, except those involved in construc-tion
activities. Many were somehow registered and likely to pay some form of tax. Only
one in six of the respondents were members of an association of artisans or similar group-ing.
Three out of four sample enterprises had been created by their current operators, who
had in most cases done so with their own savings. More than half of the enterprise had ex-isted
more than two years and twenty per cent had existed nine years or more. The average
(mean) age of enterprises was 5.2 years. In one of four sample enterprises the entrepreneur
was working alone. Average enterprise size in terms of employment was 3.3, including the
entrepreneur. Less than three per cent of the enterprises employed more than ten workers
and none more than twenty. Thirty five per cent of all those working in the sample enter-prises
were apprentices; twenty-one per cent were wage-workers, three quarters of them
permanent employees.
Three out of four enterprises took in less than US$4002 per month, and half of the en-terprises
less than US$200. A major reason for differences in income among activities lies
in the fact that costs of inputs vary widely.An estimate of net income shows that, at the low
end of the scale, half of the enterprises of leatherworkers, who were, incidentally, the least
educated among the sample entrepreneurs, were left with less than US$43 per month after
all inputs had been paid for. In the middle of the net income range were women’s dressmak-ers,
cyber cafés and restaurants. Garages were left, on average, with US$170 per month
(mean) but half of them made US$88 or less.
Having defined as a relatively successful enterprise one that, within a given activity,
had done well both in terms of gross income and productivity, defined as gross income per
worker, a high performance group was identified and compared with a group of equal size,
consisting of relatively less successful firms. It could thus be noted that enterprises in the
former category were more likely to have existed longer, and to be run by entrepreneurs
who were somewhat older. The low performers among the entrepreneurs were somewhat
more likely than others to have been born in Yaoundé, and to have grown up in a family of
wage-workers rather than one of artisans or traders. Among the high performers, a rela-tively
high share of those who had come to Yaoundé to find work, rather than, for example,
in order to get an education, was noteworthy.As concerns education and training, more suc-cessful
entrepreneurs appeared to have gone somewhat further in school, they were more
likely to have had some form of pre-employment vocational training, and with 61 per cent,
as compared to 64 per cent for the low performers, they were only slightly less likely to
have been traditional apprentices.
2 The exchange rate (rounded) at the time of the survey was Fcfa 100 = 0.13 US$, or 1 US$ = 770 Fcfa.
vi

When entrepreneurs who had been in business for at least a year were asked how they
were doing, compared to previous years, only one in four respondents said that business
was better than before. Some 46 per cent said that business was down; 26 per cent said that
is was about the same; and four per cent didn’t know.
By way of conclusion, it seems fair to say that Yaoundé’s informal sector consists of
lots of more or less viable micro-enterprises, most of them yielding only modest incomes to
their operators. Most of these operators are neither uneducated nor among the poorest of the
poor. Their productivity is often low both as a result of specific skill deficiencies and a lack
of customers. They are not in large numbers dissatisfied and thinking of doing something
else, no doubt because alternatives are limited. Finally, it appears important to reiterate that
a large extent of heterogeneity exists among micro-entrepreneurs. This should render any
generalisation suspect and be evident in interventions aimed at them.
vii

Contents Page
Acknowledgements......................................................................................................................iii
Executive Summary......................................................................................................................v
Contents Page ..............................................................................................................................ix
Table of Tables....................................................................................................................................x
Table of Charts....................................................................................................................................x
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................1
Background.........................................................................................................................................1
Objectives and methodology ..............................................................................................................2
Chapter 1: Context .......................................................................................................................5
The country and the economy ............................................................................................................5
The labour market...............................................................................................................................6
Working in Yaoundé ...........................................................................................................................6
Education and training........................................................................................................................8
Chapter 2: Informal Sector Entrepreneurs ...............................................................................9
Age of the entrepreneurs...................................................................................................................10
Male and Female Entrepreneurs .......................................................................................................10
Family background and reasons for being in Yaoundé.....................................................................12
Education ..........................................................................................................................................13
Vocational Training...........................................................................................................................15
Apprenticeship..................................................................................................................................16
Most useful learning experience.......................................................................................................17
Career paths ......................................................................................................................................18
Skills needed and skills acquired......................................................................................................19
Interest in further training.................................................................................................................22
Chapter 3: Informal Sector Enterprises...................................................................................25
Creation and age of the enterprise ....................................................................................................25
Size of the enterprise and worker characteristics .............................................................................27
Working hours ..................................................................................................................................29
Technology and equipment...............................................................................................................30
Performance of the enterprise...........................................................................................................31
Problems and perspectives................................................................................................................36
Chapter 4: Apprenticeship in the Enterprise...........................................................................39
Concluding remarks...................................................................................................................45
Annex: Methodology and organisation of work .....................................................................47
ix

Table of Tables
Table 1. Cameroon’s employed population, by sex, formal and informal sector, 1996................................6
Table 2. Number of sample entrepreneurs, by activity and sex...............................................................9
Table 3. Differences between male and female entrepreneurs in selected activities.............................11
Table 4. Entrepreneurs having been apprentices, as a percentage of all, by activity, and by
average duration of the apprenticeship in months...................................................................16
Table 5. Most useful education or training experience, by activity, percentage of sample
entrepreneurs (answer “other” not included)...........................................................................18
Table 6. Employment in sample enterprises, by activity, by employment status, as a
percentage of total employed including the owner/entrepreneur ............................................28
Table 7. Percentage of entrepreneurs using certain tools and equipment, by activity .............................30
Table 8. Average gross and net monthly revenues (corrected) as well as gross revenues
per worker, thousands of FCFA, mean and median.................................................................34
Table 9. Performance matrix: number of sample enterprises grouped in quintiles
of gross revenue and productivity levels .................................................................................35
Table 10. Comparing what are designated relatively high performance (HPE) and relatively low
performance (LPE) sample enterprises in each of the twelve sample activities, selected
variables, percentages (unless otherwise stated) .....................................................................36
Table 11. First or second most pressing problem in operating the enterprise, by activity,
percentage of all enterprises in the activity .............................................................................37
Table 12. Percentage of entrepreneurs who would like to have gone further in their studies, who
would like their child to be an apprentice, who would like their child to learn their trade,
and who think that more education leads guarantees bigger earnings, by activity..................38
Table 13. Percentage of entrepreneurs who currently have, who had in the past, and
who never had apprentices, number of apprentices and average number of
apprentices in enterprises currently with apprentices, by activity...........................................39
Table 14. Comparing education levels of sample entrepreneurs and their apprentices,
by activity, percentages of those having primary school completed or less
(Prim), and secondary school completed or more (Bac) .........................................................41
Table 15. Share of women’s dressmakers with apprentices who charge apprenticeship
fees, or not, by whether they conclude apprenticeship contracts, or not....................................42
Table of Charts
Chart 1. Family background of entrepreneurs, by activity, in percentages ...........................................12
Chart 2. Reasons for being in Yaoundé, by activity, percentages..........................................................13
Chart 3. Educational attainment of sample entrepreneurs.....................................................................14
Chart 4. Entrepreneurs’ career paths, relative duration per phase.........................................................19
Chart 5. Skills gap: Apply for and manage credit .................................................................................21
Chart 6. Skills gap: Marketing ..............................................................................................................21
Chart 7. Skills gap: Book keeping.........................................................................................................22
Chart 8. Percentage of sample enterprises by age of enterprise ............................................................26
Chart 9. Number of persons, including the entrepreneur, having worked in the enterprise during
the preceding week, percentages of all enterprises in the sample ...........................................27
Chart 10. Median of net and gross revenues, per activity, in '000 Fcfa...................................................32
Chart 11. Gross revenue ceilings, per quartile and per activity...............................................................33
x

Introduction
Background
In observing African labour markets3, or those of other developing countries, for ex-ample
with a view to elaborating measures that would improve employment opportunities
and incomes of a rapidly growing labour force, it is hard to ignore a sort of dualism in the
way people go about their economic activities. It often appears as if people, somehow, oper-ate
on the one, or the other side of a virtual fence. While pertinent statistics may be scarce,
or otherwise of limited use in proving, or illustrating the point, one need only walk the bus-tling
commercial areas of African cities, or the mini-markets of rural villages, to discover
what is now commonly called the informal sector. Neither a marginal, nor a transient phe-nomenon,
it is essentially that part of the economy where most people, including those well
educated, have turned to, once they found that there were no employers demanding their la-bour,
and that it made little sense to keep looking for non existing wage-employment. It is
the part of the economy that is largely made up of unincorporated, household-based, micro-and
small enterprises that are unlikely to “go by the book” in the manner of their formal sec-tor
counterparts. It is where most workers are self-employed, or unpaid family helpers, or
apprentices, involved, with more or less success, in a wide range of more or less productive
activities, including retail trade, of course, but also manufacturing and repair services.
Leaving aside theWest African women who, with a mixture of respect and envy, are some-times
referred to as Nana Benz4, it is where most people end up poor.
The informal sector in Africa is large and growing. It was always large, no doubt, but
its sponge role has been accentuated by the fact that, in most countries, the emerging formal
sector of the economy has all but ceased to hire employees, in the wake of economic reces-sion,
structural adjustment, and a shrinking public sector. Indeed, formal sector wage em-ployment
has often declined both in relative and in absolute terms. In most African
countries, including Cameroon, such employment currently represents a mere ten per cent,
or less, of the labour force. Since, in the same countries, the labour force is typically in-creasing
by three per cent per year, even a vigorous restart of the formal sector will not, for
many years to come, result in the absorption of more than a trickle of new labour force en-trants.
1
3 See e.g. Fluitman, Fred, Working, but not well: notes on the nature and extent of employment problems in
Sub-Saharan Africa, International Training Centre of the ILO, Occasional Papers, Turin, October, 2001.
4 The expression is widely known in the region and refers to women (“nana” is a French colloquial) who have done
so well in their informal business, notably trading textile, that they can afford to drive a luxury automobile.

A good reason to highlight a formal/informal dichotomy exists in the fact that
policymakers in many countries have tended not to know, or to ignore, that up to ninety per
cent of a population would end up at the “wrong side of the fence”. Others have tried, usu-ally
without success, to frustrate the phenomenon, or to oppose it more forcefully, such as
by sending in bulldozers. Increasingly, however, there is an interest in policy circles, in be-ing
more constructive and think in terms of measures that would improve conditions for
those who work in the informal sector. And it is widely believed that innovative education
and training policies should be part of such measures. Indeed, there is new evidence from
around the continent of innovative and effective approaches to training for work in the in-formal
sector5.
Objectives and methodology
It is against this background that it should be of interest, among other things, to ques-tion
both the relevance of the education and training systems in place, and their effective-ness
in preparing people for the world of work. Are current mechanisms of skills
development in African countries, government-sponsored or not, sufficiently geared to
helping people earn a decent income, that is, in the informal sector? Do governments really
have a role to play in this regard; what, if so, is that role, and are governments actually play-ing
it? Who are these informal sector operators anyway? Are they mostly men, and illiter-ate?
And what are the skills they have, as compared to the skills they would need? Where, if
governments failed to deliver, did they get the skills they have? Do informal sector entre-preneurs
consciously train those who work in their enterprises? What is the state of tradi-tional
apprenticeship in different trades?
Answering these and other such questions, should best be done along different tracks,
including the process of primary data gathering. The main objective of the present study of
skills and work in Yaoundé, is, therefore, to draw conclusions, as warranted, from what se-lected
informal sector entrepreneurs say about themselves and their enterprises, and in par-ticular
about their distinct career paths and the skills they have acquired along the way.
Ultimately this may help in the design and implementation of measures intended to im-prove
the functioning of both training systems and micro-enterprises, and consequently en-hance
their contribution to meeting national economic and social objectives.
The present study might be considered as a “reverse tracer study”, that is, a relatively
common type of survey used to verify the relevance and effectiveness of education and
training systems by asking people at work about their background and careers. In fact, its
aims and methodology are practically the same as those of an earlier study, undertaken in a
fewWest African countries, in 1989. More precisely, the present study follows closely the
approach taken in a 1989 survey of micro-enterprises in Lomé, Togo6. Besides resulting in
5 See e.g. Haan, Hans C., Training for Work in the Informal Sector: new evidence from Eastern and Southern
2
Africa, International Training Centre of the ILO, Occasional Papers, Turin, November 2001.
6 Fluitman, Fred, and Xavier Oudin, Skill Acquisition and Work in Micro-enterprises: Evidence from Lomé, Togo ,
International Labour Office, Vocational Training Branch, Geneva, December 1991. The Lomé results were
integrated into: Birks, Steve, Fred Fluitman, Xavier Oudin and Clive Sinclair, Skills Acquisition in
Micro-enterprises: Evidence from West Africa , A joint study of the World Bank, the ILO, and the Development
Centre of the OECD, Development Centre Documents, OECD, Paris, 1994 (also published in French).

various savings, it was hoped that this should allow one, as a by-product, to validate the ear-lier
findings, for an other place, at a later time, that is, Yaoundé in the year 2000.
In order to meet the survey’s main aim, a stratified sample was drawn so as to arrive at
a sufficiently large number of responses for each of a significant number of relatively com-mon,
but distinct economic activities, carried out by women and men, and believed to re-quire
a certain degree of technical and managerial skills. The sample therefore, purposely,
included a variety of artisan trades and technical services, and excluded wholesale or retail
trading activities, which are, no doubt, numerically more important among informal sector
enterprises. The size of the enterprise was not decided on in advance as a selection yard-stick,
since it was believed, and borne out by subsequent experience, that relatively few es-tablishments
would have more than five workers, including the entrepreneur. Additional
details about the survey methodology may be found in Annex 1.
It is important to underline that, while the sum of the selected activities represents an
important segment of the local economy, survey results should only be considered repre-sentative
by activity. In other words, the sample as a whole does not represent any larger
population, such as “the artisans ofYaoundé”, and far less “the informal sector” in that city.
Survey results for all respondents taken together, do provide, however, a reference point in
situating results for individual sample trades. Indeed, in presenting the results of the survey,
the emphasis will be on differences among and within the sample activities.
This paper presents, to begin with, and briefly, because pertinent data are utterly
scarce, information about the economic and social context within which people inYaoundé
work and live. A few remarks are added about Cameroon’s education and training system.
The main body of the text, will then, in some detail, present survey results for entrepreneurs
and their enterprises, respectively, emphasising, if possible and as appropriate, characteris-tics
that are somehow linked to skills and training. A further chapter will discuss appren-ticeship,
as it is currently practised in the sample enterprises. The paper ends with certain
conclusions that may be drawn from the data.
3

Chapter 1: Context
The country and the economy
Cameroon, a Central African country twice the size of Great Britain, had some fifteen
million inhabitants, with a per capita income of US$ 580, in 1999. Almost half of the coun-try’s
population is under 15 years old. Although the share of agriculture in national output
has seen major fluctuations over the last four decades, more than half of the working-age
population is still engaged in various agricultural activities. Petroleum products and timber
represent major shares in export earnings.
After gaining its independence, in 1960, the country experienced, first, a period of
modest, but balanced economic growth, followed, in the period 1977-1985, by more rapid
growth, averaging 7 per cent per year, and made possible mainly by increased oil revenues
and international borrowing. In the early 1980s, per capita income stood at US$ 1,100, and
healthy rates of domestic investment were reported. However, after 1985, deteriorating
terms of trade, a sharp decline in oil output, and a major appreciation of real exchange rates,
exposed the structural weaknesses of the economy, and triggered a profound recession. In
the words of World Bank sources, Cameroon coped with the unfavourable circumstances
by reducing producer prices and public expenditures, including a 50 per cent cut in civil ser-vice
wages, but the measures did not stimulate growth. By 1993, gross domestic product
had halved, and public utility services had declined markedly, due to lack of investment and
poor performance of state-owned firms. Government reduced considerably basic health
and education funding, leading to a major decline in health delivery systems and school en-rolment
rates.
Since the 50 per cent devaluation of the national currency, the CFA Franc, in January
1994, and the concurrent upswing in the world economy, there has been a slow return to
growth, at a rate that has accelerated, in recent years, to around five per cent per year, in real
terms. However, the dramatic social consequences of the economic and financial crisis, and
of the subsequent structural adjustment policies, are yet to be reversed. According to a 1996
household consumption survey, 51 per cent of households in the country were living below
the poverty line and 23 per cent were living in extreme poverty. Un- and under-employment
are said to be rampant. Social services have in many instances collapsed. Cameroon is
among the countries formally recognised as highly indebted and poor, and in the process of de-veloping
a strategy to help reduce poverty and restore the necessary social infrastructure, that
would qualify it for special assistance from the BrettonWoods institutions.
5

The labour market
In Cameroon, as in most other African countries, the modern, or formal, sector of the
economy is at best capable of absorbing a small fraction of those who enter the labour market
in ever-larger numbers. The formal sector is relatively small, and, for the time being, not nec-essarily
a net-creator of jobs. On the supply side, the country’s population is young and
steadily growing, and worsening poverty appears to boost female labour force participation.
Although the informal sector is by no means a new phenomenon, the economic crisis, and its
aftermath, have highlighted its role as a last, if not the only provider of work and income.
While the availability of reliable and comparable labour market data leaves much to
be desired, those generated by the statistical department (DSCN) of the Ministry of the
Economy and Finance, appear to present a plausible, if limited picture of the current em-ployment
situation in Cameroon. In 1996, the country’s working-age population was esti-mated
to be 6.7 million and, of those, 4.6 million were considered to make up the country’s
labour force, that is, to be either working, or not working but available for work. Some 4.2
million people were working, 15 per cent in the formal sector and 85 per cent in the infor-mal
sector. While almost equal numbers of women and men were employed, more women
than men were found to be working in the informal sector, while formal sector employment
was largely a male domain (see Table 1). The proportion of unemployed in the labour force
was estimated, at 8 per cent. However, unemployment was, generally, low, at half that rate,
in rural areas, and as much as 25 per cent, or more, in certain urban areas, including the city
of Yaoundé.
Table 1. Cameroon’s employed population, by sex, formal and informal sector, 1996
Male Female Total
No. % No. % No. %
Formal sector 517 205 12.2 111 337 2.6 628 542 14.8
Informal sector 1 666 329 39.4 1 937 222 45.8 3 603 551 85.2
Total 2 183 534 51.6 2 048 559 48.4 4 232 093 100.0
Source: DSCN, Cameroon Household Survey, 1996
Working in Yaoundé
The city of Yaoundé, some 200km land-inward from the Atlantic coast, is the capital
of Cameroon. Though not quite as big as the port city of Douala, it has seen its population
grow rapidly in the last quarter century from some 300,000 in 1975 to around 1.5 million in
2000. Clearly, such growth has in the first place been the result of people coming to town
from rural areas, in particular, in search of work and income. However, with so many job
seekers, the city’s relatively small formal sector was never, and will not in a long time be ca-pable
of absorbing more than a few of them. Indeed, the formal side of the Yaoundé labour
market appears to have been shrinking, mainly as a consequence of the economic and fi-
6

nancial crisis. With a large proportion of formal sector wage-employment being provided
by ministries and other public sector units, drastic government budget cuts have meant un-precedented
salary cuts, as mentioned, as well as major lay-offs. And, as a matter of course,
poverty grew worse than it already was.
Increasing numbers of job seekers, most of them young people, and women who had
not until then participated in the labour force, as well as recently retrenched workers, had
hardly an alternative, therefore, but to turn to informal sector activities for their livelihood.
Typically, the young would start as a family helper or an apprentice, others would seek ca-sual
or more permanent wage-work, but most would sooner or later be self-employed,
working alone, or with one or two other people.
The informal sector, as has been extensively documented7, consists of micro- and
small, unincorporated private enterprises, involved in a broad variety of economic activi-ties.
Highly visible, particularly in the fast growing cities of developing countries, the en-terprises
tend to be overlooked in national statistics and to be otherwise unaffected by the
prevailing framework of government regulation. As a general rule, the units are operating
at low levels of technology, productivity and income. And people who work in the sector
are, more often than not, doing so in unsavoury conditions and at high levels of risk.
With meaningful labour market information hard to come by, and carefully collected
informal sector data practically unheard of, it is certainly difficult to have a clear and com-plete
picture of work in cities such asYaoundé. However, a major survey of the city’s labour
market, undertaken in 1993, by the DSCN and a French research network, called DIAL,
provides several useful insights. This survey found, inter alia, that 56 per cent ofYaoundé’s
economically active population was involved in informal sector activities, four out of five
of them as own-account or self-employed workers. Indeed, the survey confirmed that infor-mal
sector wage-employment is relatively uncommon, in this case 10 percent. The formal
sector in the city employed 19 per cent of the labour force, most of them for wages, and 25
per cent of the Yaoundé labour force were considered unemployed. Some 89,000 informal
units were estimated, at the time, to employ approximately 125,000 people in various
non-agricultural economic activities, 40 per cent of them women. Two thirds of the enter-prises
were single worker affairs and only four per cent had more than three workers. More
than half of all the informal sector workers, were involved in trading. Other findings in-cluded
an average of eight years of schooling, a median income far below the official mini-mum
wage, and the fact that informal sector entrepreneurs financed up to 90 per cent of
their capital from their personal savings. One in six of the enterprises paid fees for trading
licences, and roughly one in five had been involved in some form of litigation with public
officials, usually settled with a “gift”. Nonetheless, excessive state intervention was cited
as a problem by only 13 per cent of respondents, far behind a major preoccupation with a
lack of customers and excessive competition8.
7
7 The “Google” internet search engine, yields some 70,100 results for the expression “informal sector” and an
additional 17,400 for the expression “informal economy”.
8 See: http://www.dial.prd.fr/en/publi/dialogue/dial5/art1.htm

Education and training
Most of Cameroon’s formal education and training system is diseased, particularly as
a consequence of years of under-funding and lack of proper management. Recovery is high
on the policy agenda, but appears slow to materialise. The background section of a 1997
World Bank report9, an analysis carried out to make the case for a basic education improve-ment
project, summed up the situation by finding, inter alia, that: “learning results at both
primary and secondary level have been very poor and are jeopardising human resource de-velopment.
In almost all parts of the country, primary school enrolment rates have been
falling over much of the past decade, and currently, the gross enrolment rate stands at 83 per
cent compared with 114 per cent ten years ago. Between 1987/88 and 1996/97, there was al-most
no recruitment of primary school teachers and thus the system became increasingly
dependent on teachers paid by parents10. Many teachers graduating from teacher training
colleges (which were only reopened in 1995/96 after being closed for five years) still lack
some of the skills needed for effective teaching. [...] The quality of the system has declined
resulting in average repetition rates of 29 per cent” 11.
Enrolment rates do not, however, present the whole picture of exclusion from the ed-ucation
system. Significant proportions of pupils, initially enrolled, never complete their
primary education. Moreover, while progress has been made in this respect, girls continue
to be under-represented in schools. In 1998/99 there were, on average, 48 girls per 100 pu-pils
in the first grade, and 39 girls per 100 pupils in the sixth grade of primary school. It has
been estimated that, for the country as a whole, half of all women over 11 years of age are il-literate,
as compared to 30 per cent of all men.
The World Bank report cited above, goes on to say that “technical colleges are not
providing meaningful job-oriented practical training due to a lack of teacher motivation,
poor planning of the disciplines that are taught, resource constraints, and a complete sepa-ration
between the colleges and the world of work”. And that “no education statistics were
collected between 1988 and 1995, and few if any other data sets have been available. The
Ministry has thus lacked the information needed to rationally plan the use of increasingly
scarce resources for the system.”
9 Report PID5206, found on the World Bank website: www.worldbank.org.
10 The Cameroon Ministry of Education estimates that it employed 17 433 primary school teachers (or one for every
8
82 pupils) in 1998, as compared to 25 185 teachers (or one for every 50 pupils) in 1988. There was a shortage,
therefore, of some 15,000 primary school teachers in 1998, based on an average of 50 pupils per teacher.
11 Other sources cite a gross enrolment rate of 75 per cent in 1995/96. It is not uncommon for gross enrolment rates to
exceed 100 per cent, because they relate actual enrolments, for example in a 6-year primary school system, to the
number of children in a corresponding 6-year age group (e.g. all children 6-11 years of age). And, obviously, there
are many 12- and 13- and even 16-year old children enrolled in the primary schools of Cameroon. Gross
enrolment rates are, therefore, necessarily, high in countries which, for one reason or another, have many late
starters and/or high repeater rates. With a reported gross enrolment rate of 83 per cent, and a repeater rate of 29 per
cent, it is more than likely that almost half of all school-age children in Cameroon are not attending school.

Chapter 2: Informal Sector Entrepreneurs
The results of the Yaoundé survey of skills and work in the informal sector, derive
from structured interviews, conducted in the month of December, 2000, with 682 business
owners/entrepreneurs, in twelve selected trades (Table 2).
Table 2. Number of sample entrepreneurs, by activity and sex
ACTIVITY Total Men Women
Women’s dressmakers 54 20 34
Men’s tailors 47 46 1
Women’s hairdressers 74 10 64
Wood workers 73 72 1
Car mechanics 53 53 0
Masons, carpenters 53 53 0
Radio & electr. repair 43 43 0
Leather workers 51 51 0
Restaurants 65 25 40
Admin. services & cyber cafés 53 23 30
Refrigeration repair 45 45 0
Metal workers 71 71 0
TOTAL SAMPLE 682 512 170
The respondents, who in this paper will be mainly referred to as entrepreneurs, are
self-employed men and women who organise, manage and assume the risk of a business,
however small and whatever the trade. Having stratified the sample, inter alia to allow for a
comparison between male and female entrepreneurs, one in four of the respondents was a
woman. Almost all of the sample entrepreneurs were owner/operators, and more than three
out of four had actually created the business they were now running. While several were
working alone, most respondents were working together with one or two others, that is,
partners or associates, apprentices, wage employees or unpaid helpers, as will be elabo-rated
later. Again, almost all respondents said that running the business was their principal
activity, and only a few (six per cent) said that they were also engaged in other income earn-
9

ing activities, such as tending a garden or driving a taxi. Ninety six per cent of respondents
were Cameroon citizens.
Age of the entrepreneurs
The average (mean) age of the 682 sample entrepreneurs was 33 years. Only three per
cent in the total sample were less than 21 years of age, including the two youngest respon-dents,
a 14- and a 16-year old restaurant operator. Only four per cent in the whole sample
were over 50 years of age, including the two oldest respondents, a 69 years old tailor and an
85 years old wood worker. There are considerable age differences by activity. Average age
ranges from 27 years for women’s hairdressers to 41 years for men’s tailors. Whereas in the
sample as a whole precisely half the number of respondents is under 32, this is the case for
only 19 per cent of the men’s tailors and 25 per cent of the woodworkers. At the other end of
the spectrum are women’s hairdressers, ofwhom87 per cent are under 32.Anumber of fac-tors
may explain such variation. Thus it appears that certain activities, such as women’s
hairdressing, are typically undertaken by young women, not only in Yaoundé, but else-where
as well. Interestingly, in the 1989 Lomé survey on which the present one is modelled,
the average age for women’s hairdressers was also 27 and significantly lower than for other
activities. Age variation among trades is also a function of the time it takes to be ready and
start one’s enterprise, and of the current attractiveness of certain activities from an income
point of view.
Comparing data for respondents under 27 years of age (28 per cent of the total sam-ple),
as opposed to respondents over 39 years (24 per cent of the total sample), suggests,
inter alia, that relatively younger entrepreneurs are more likely than older entrepreneurs to
have been born inYaoundé.Younger respondents are also more likely to hail from a family
of wageworkers rather than a family of farmers, and to have undergone some form of
pre-employment vocational training (other than apprenticeship). Two thirds of both age
categories had been apprentices before becoming self-employed.
Male and Female Entrepreneurs
One in four of all entrepreneurs in the sample (170 out of 682) were women, almost
all of them occupied in four of the sample activities, namely, hairdressing for women, oper-ating
a restaurant, women’s dressmaking, and offering secretarial and internet services. It
may be recalled that sample activities were selected, partly, to ensure a significant number
of women respondents. It was, nonetheless, remarkable that, while men were also involved
in each of the four activities mentioned, no women entrepreneurs, except two, were found
in the remaining eight activities in the sample. This suggests that, at least in today’s infor-mal
sector of cities such asYaoundé, there are more “male” than “female” trades outside of
commerce. Thus, men are involved, as are women, in making women’s dresses, whereas
making men’s clothing appears to be a male domain. Men are involved, as are women, in
operating restaurants, and, to a lesser extent, in doing women’s hair, both presumably fe-male
domains (cf. the case of Lomé). Interestingly, women are a majority among those pro-
10

viding informal administrative, e-mail and internet services, presumably, at once, a less
traditional trade and a rapidly growing employment opportunity for educated young people
with access to a computer.
Comparing male and female entrepreneurs may be done for the sample as a whole, it
being understood that this would, to a large extent, amount to comparing results for a group
of four, as opposed to a group of eight distinct sample activities. It appears more interesting,
therefore, to compare men and women engaged in, more or less, the same activity, in spite
of the fact that group sizes are smaller12. Thus it appears (Table 3) that men and women en-trepreneurs
involved in making dresses have far less in common than men and women run-ning
cyber cafés. Interestingly, women dressmakers are significantly better educated than
their male counterparts, unlike in the other two activities. This may well be a reflection of
believing that, in a context as prevailing in Yaoundé, relatively educated women have
fewer occupational options than men. It is also worth observing that, in at least two of the
three activities, men appear to make much more money (median revenues) than their fe-male
counterparts. This would be rather easy to explain if women were unable to spend the
same amount of time as men on their business activities, but this does not appear to be the
case.
Table 3. Differences between male and female entrepreneurs in selected activities
activity
women’s
dressmaking
restaurants
admin. services
& cyber cafe
male female male female male female
no. of entrepreneurs 20 34 26 40 23 30
av. age (years) 43 40 29 37 31 32
% from agric. family 63 39 38 40 30 27
% artisan/trader fam. 21 33 33 28 22 27
% wage worker fam. 16 27 29 33 48 47
% born in Yaoundé 0 18 17 20 17 31
% came for education 32 9 26 15 57 41
% came for work 63 15 48 13 13 21
% came with spouse 0 48 0 40 0 0
av. education (years) 7 12 12 10 18 15
% had voc. training 41 55 36 38 59 67
% was apprentice 79 58 40 13 45 48
% has apprentices 60 71 12 3 43 20
median revenues (‘000 fcfa) 168 130 250 240 197 112
11
12 In view of the relatively small number of men involved in women’s hairdressing (14 per cent of all hairdressers),
and so as to stay clear of statistical bias, this activity has been left out of Table 3.

Family background and reasons for being in Yaoundé
Almost half of the sample entrepreneurs grew up in a family of farmers and, there-fore,
in a rural environment. The other half grew up, in roughly equal proportions, either in
families of artisans and traders, or families of wage-workers. Here again, one may observe
major variations by current economic activity. Most likely to have immediate roots in agri-culture,
were leather workers (three out of four) and those involved in either construction
trades or wood or metal work (almost two out of three). And least likely to have grown up in
a family of farmers were women’s hairdressers and those involved in administrative ser-vices
and cyber cafés (one out of four). Indeed, the two latter groups were most likely to hail
from a family of wage-workers (42 and 53 per cent, respectively). One third of men’s tailors
and those operating garages grew up in families of artisans or traders.
Chart 1. Family background of entrepreneurs, by activity, in percentages
Women’s dressmakers
Men’s tailors
Women’s hairdressers
Wood workers
Car mechanics
Masons, carpenters
Radio & electr. repairs
Leather workers
Restaurants
Admin. & cyber cafés
Refrigeration repairs
Metal workers
Only 22 per cent of all entrepreneurs in the sample were born in Yaoundé. It was a
mere 10 per cent in the case of leatherworkers and 11 per cent of women’s dressmakers, as
against 47 per cent of women’s hairdressers. The others came to town for various reasons,
but most of all in search of work or for education and training purposes. For example, some
60 per cent of wood and metal workers had come to Yaoundé for work, whereas half of
those in administrative services and cyber cafés had come for their education. A sizeable
proportion of women entrepreneurs, notably women’s dressmakers and restaurant opera-tors,
had come with their husbands.
12
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
farmers artisan / traders wage workers Unknown

Chart 2. Reasons for being in Yaoundé, by activity, percentages
Men’s tailors
Wood workers
Car mechanics
Masons, carpenters
Leather workers
Restaurants
Metal workers
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
Born in Yaoundé Came for education Came for work Other reasons
Education
It appears that, together with gender, the type and level of one’s education, are key de-terminants
in choosing -or otherwise ending up in- a particular economic activity. As a
group, the entrepreneurs in the sample had had an average of eleven years of formal school-ing.
This supposedly high score appears consistent not only with finding that a mere eight
per cent of respondents said that they had not completed primary education, but also with
the fact that primary school repeater rates in Cameroon are exceedingly high. That being
said, school enrolment- and school completion data for the country as a whole, suggest that
those who operate their own business are, on average, far better educated than those who
don’t. Indeed, half of the sample entrepreneurs had obtained a diploma better than complet-ing
primary school. Six per cent reported to have obtained a university diploma. The com-bined
male entrepreneurs appeared to be somewhat more educated than the female
entrepreneurs in the sample, but, as was shown earlier, in the case of dressmakers, there are
certain activities where male operators are decidedly less educated than their female coun-terparts.
13

Chart 3. Educational attainment of sample entrepreneurs
Men’s tailors
Wood workers
Car mechanics
Masons, carpenters
Leather workers
Restaurants
Metal workers
Note: the primary level consists of a 6-year cycle; the secondary, first cycle (Collège) adds, in principle, four more years
of either general or technical education; the secondary second cycle (Lycée) adds an other three years of either general of
technical education.
The forty-four per cent of respondents who had obtained one or another type of sec-ondary
school diploma of the French variety, had passed through either a general (25%) or a
technical stream (19%). Two-thirds of these diplomas were lower level ones, called BEPC,
in the case of general- and CAP in the case of technical education. The fact that more than
half of the entrepreneurs in the construction trades had followed a technical stream, as com-pared
to one in four in some of the other trades, is worth emphasising. What it probably
means is that masonry and carpentry feature more prominently in technical education
programmes than some other competencies.
Leatherworkers were, relatively speaking, the least educated of the sample entrepre-neurs,
having had an average of eight years of schooling; 22 per cent of them did not com-plete
primary school. Those involved in administrative services and cyber cafés were the
most educated, with an average of 17 years of schooling, and with 30 per cent of them hav-ing
obtained a university diploma. The relatively better educated entrepreneurs were, on
average, younger than the less educated, much more likely to have grown up in a family of
wage employees, and more likely, in addition to their general or vocational education, to
have undergone a period of vocational training.
Vocational Training
A surprisingly large proportion of the micro-entrepreneurs in the sample (45%), re-ported
that, apart from their formal schooling, they had been enrolled in some form of
14
0% 25% 50% 75% 100%
None Primary completed
First cycle of secondary completed (BEPC or CAP) Second cycle of secondary completed (BAC) or higher

pre-employment vocational training. The highest proportion, activity-wise, concerned en-trepreneurs
providing administrative and internet services. Almost two out of three of them
(63%) had had vocational training, no doubt mainly in private “secretarial colleges”,
where, in earlier days, they learned typing, and, more recently, how to use computers for
various purposes. Other sample activities with at least half of the entrepreneurs having un-dergone
vocational training, were women’s hairdressing (55%), women’s dressmaking
(50%), and repairing radios and other electrical equipment (55%). Relatively low scores,
just over one in four, were obtained for men’s tailors (29%) and car mechanics (28%).
The pre-employment vocational training reported on, consisted almost always of
courses of a relatively long duration. However, one may assume that most of the training
was of a part-time nature, taking, for example, only a few hours per week. Be that as it may,
half of those who were trained said they had spent more than two years on their training, and
fifteen percent, reportedly, five years or more. Eleven per cent spent six months or less. As
one would expect, the duration of training varied by activity, but may also have been a func-tion
of cost. Training for hairdressers and operators of cyber cafés did not normally extend
beyond two years, whereas the training of masons and carpenters, and of dressmakers, usu-ally
lasted more than two years.
Fifty eight per cent of those who had thus been trained, received their training in pri-vate-
for-profit institutions, many, no doubt, of the informal sector variety. Government
training institutions handled twenty four per cent, and the remainder of the trainees visited
non-governmental, not-for-profit institutions, such as run by religious organisations. Pri-vate-
for-profit providers catered in particular to men’s tailors, women’s hairdressers, radio
repair people and those offering administrative and internet services. Government institu-tions
appeared to have trained of most of the masons and carpenters in the sample.
Seventy two per cent of all who had followed vocational training courses, reported to
have paid fees. The share of those who had paid varied from ninety per cent in the case of
hairdressers and those providing administrative and internet services, to sixty five per cent
in the case of construction workers, and roughly half of the leather workers and car mechan-ics.
Fees were often relatively high, at an average FCFA277,000 per course; they varied for
eighty per cent of those who paid, between FCFA50,000 and FCFA500,000 (appr. US$ 65
and US$ 650). Half of those who had paid fees, paid more than FCFA 170,000 (appr. US$
220).
That payments can be prohibitive may be concluded from finding that half of those
who had not had any vocational training said that this was mainly due to lack of money.An-other
25 per cent of those who had not undergone pre-employment vocational training said
they had had no need for it, presumably because they had learned their skills in school, or as
apprentices, or simply by doing the job. Other reasons mentioned included giving prefer-ence
to apprenticeship, failing to pass an entry examination and lacking a husband’s per-mission.
A fair number of leather workers and men’s tailors pointed out that vocational
training in their trade was not available.
15

Apprenticeship
Two thirds of the sample entrepreneurs had passed through an age-old combination
of work and training, that is, a period of traditional apprenticeship, in addition to whatever
education and training they might have had. Some reported to have had two apprentice-ships,
presumably after dropping out of, rather than completing, a first attempt. As one
would expect, almost all had been apprentices in the trade they were currently practising.
The apprenticeships were of varying duration among and within different trades. In most
cases they lasted between two and three years. Those who had been apprentices in garages
had, more often than not, spent between three and four years. However, in the modern busi-ness
of providing computer-based services, an apprenticeship was usually completed
within nine months.
Table 4. Entrepreneurs having been apprentices, as a percentage of all, by activity, and
by average duration of the apprenticeship in months
ACTIVITY % has been apprentice average no. of months
Women’s dressmakers 65 27
Men’s tailors 78 30
Women’s hairdressers 59 10
Wood workers 69 32
Car mechanics 83 45
Masons, carpenters 71 30
Radio & electr. repair 71 29
Leather workers 61 23
Restaurants 23 20
Admin. services & cyber cafés 47 9
Refrigeration repair 74 33
Metal workers 90 35
TOTAL SAMPLE 65 28
Those running small restaurants were the only ones among the sample entrepreneurs
who had not usually been apprentices at an earlier stage in their career. Supposedly, few
skills are believed needed in this trade, which is typically carried out with unpaid family
helpers. And indeed, it is equally uncommon to find apprentices in informal sector eateries
elsewhere in West Africa.
16

It is important to recognise that pre-employment vocational training and traditional
apprenticeship were not mutually exclusive modes of skills development. In fact, signifi-cant
numbers of sample entrepreneurs having gone through some form of vocational train-ing,
also had been apprentices. It was particularly so in the case of metal workers and car
mechanics. Among several possible explanations, it would seem reasonable to suggest that
their training, which, more often than not, would have preceded their apprenticeship, did
not suffice for entering directly into wage- or self-employment.
Most useful learning experience
In answer to the question which kind of education or training had, in their lives so far,
been the most useful, apprenticeship, which 66 per cent of all respondents had gone
through, scored slightly higher (at 26 per cent) than general education, which scored 24 per
cent. Although almost all respondents had completed primary education, or gone further in
school, general education scored relatively low. It was most valued, on the one hand, by
those who, on average, had had most of it, that is those operating cyber cafés, and, on the
other hand, by those operating restaurants, in whose case apprenticeship and other forms of
pre-employment training are uncommon.
Apprenticeship came first for almost forty per cent of metal and leather workers, and
for one in three of the car mechanics and women’s dressmakers in the sample. Technical ed-ucation,
at 14 per cent, got relatively high marks, if account is taken of the fact that less than
one in four respondents received such education. Vocational training, received by 45 per
cent, was most useful for 16 per cent of all respondents. However, among respondents who
had at least completed primary school, and, in addition, gone through vocational training,
as well as a period of traditional apprenticeship (together some 20 per cent of all respon-dents),
37 per cent mentioned vocational training.
Asked whether they would like their child to be an apprentice, irrespective of the
trade, a majority of sample entrepreneurs (57 per cent) said they would. Only in the case of
hairdressers, most of them relatively well educated women, and in the case of restaurant
owners, mostly women and in a trade where apprenticeship is less common, did less than
half of the respondents express what should be considered a positive view of traditional ap-prenticeship.
17

Table 5. Most useful education or training experience, by activity, percentage of
sample entrepreneurs (answer “other” not included)
ACTIVITY
General
education
Technical
education
Vocational
training
Appren-tice-ship
Work
itself
% % % % %
Women’s dressmakers 6 22 22 33 17
Men’s tailors 33 4 13 28 17
Women’s hairdressers 25 14 19 24 18
Wood workers 25 21 13 19 19
Car mechanics 17 9 15 36 23
Masons, carpenters 23 23 8 27 17
Radio & electr. repair 19 14 30 28 9
Leather workers 18 4 6 39 29
Restaurants 42 15 6 11 22
Admin. serv./cybercafés 42 9 28 4 13
Refrigeration repair 27 18 16 30 9
Metal workers 13 9 17 39 22
TOTAL 24 14 16 26 18
Career paths
The diverse periods that respondents have spent on education, pre-employment vo-cational
training, apprenticeship, previous work, unemployment and non-participation in
the labour force, may be seen to add up to individual “career paths”. An attempt to construct
typical pathways, by activity, and based on the average duration of distinct career phases, is
illustrated in Chart 4. This particular illustration is in relative terms, that is, it represents, for
each of the activities, the relative duration of each phase between entering school and enter-ing
current self-employment. Beginning at the bottom, with the share of years in school, the
virtual path moves up, via the shares of vocational training and apprenticeship, through
phases representing years without work and years in previous employment. It should be un-derstood
that the typical path is a composite: survey respondents have neither necessarily
passed through each and every phase, nor always in the sequence proposed in the bar
chart13. In absolute terms the total length of the paths varies, roughly between 17 and 23
years after entering primary school, as the average duration of different phases varies, de-pending
on who goes where.
13 The likely fact that not all entrepreneurs will have gone through each and every phase, is reflected in the average
18
duration per phase. Thus, a short average duration may reflect that most entrepreneurs in the activity concerned,
spent a short time, if any, doing this, or, alternatively, that a few entrepreneurs spent a long time each. Moreover,
as is likely in the case of those whose training has been part-time, or in the case of those in school doing casual
jobs, or unpaid family work, certain phases may, in real life, have overlapped.

Chart 4. Entrepreneurs’ career paths, relative duration per phase
With the necessary caution, one could conclude that years spent in school repre-sented,
in all but one activity, half or more of what it took respondents to reach their current
position. Which reflects the relatively high level of education of entrepreneurs in the sam-ple,
as well as the high repeater rates that are common in the country. Clearly,
pre-employment vocational training and apprenticeship were relatively less important in
terms of their duration (emphasis added). Periods without work include unemployment
and years outside the labour force. They appear rather unimportant, except perhaps in the
case of women running restaurants and making dresses, whose average age suggests that
over the years they have had to spent considerable amounts of time away from work, pre-sumably
to look after children (unlike in the case of much younger female hairdressers).
The share of previous employment, either as unpaid family helper, wage-worker or inde-pendent
worker, clearly is important, even in the case of activities carried out by relatively
young entrepreneurs. This means that relatively few respondents had started their current
enterprise straight after completing their apprenticeship, let alone upon leaving the school
system. This is confirmed by finding that most respondents had started their current busi-ness
with their own savings, which took, no doubt, some time to accumulate.
Skills needed and skills acquired
Naturally, a wide range of technical and other skills and competencies may be associ-ated
with the twelve sample activities. Entrepreneurs, across the board, agreed, however,
that technical skills, specific to their current activity, were the most important of all, even if
nine per cent of respondents put “talking with customers” on top. Technical skills were
also, by far, the first priority for further training, as will be elaborated below. In addition to
technical skills and competencies, there are various generic skills and core competencies,
19

more or less common to all activities, such as reading and writing, keeping books, calculat-ing
costs, marketing, training one’s personnel, repairing machines, or using computers. Re-spondents
were presented with a list and, first, asked how important such skills and
competencies were in their particular trades. They were subsequently asked whether they
had acquired them and, if so where.
It appeared that, generally speaking, most entrepreneurs found most of the generic
skills mentioned very important. However, some skills received more votes than others did.
For example, negotiating with suppliers and/or customers was almost unanimously judged
an important skill, except by a few caterers, probably used to fixed prices. Book keeping
was considered very important by 36 per cent, and somewhat important by 18 per cent,
yielding a combined score of just over half of all respondents. These percentages usually
varied by activity, however. Construction workers (69 per cent of them) and restaurant
owners (64 per cent) were obviously more convinced of the importance of book keeping
than leather workers (24 per cent) or hairdressers (44 per cent). While two in three radio re-pair
people didn’t see the importance of being able to manipulate a pocket calculator, two in
three construction workers wouldn’t leave home without one. Training or coaching skills
were, as might be expected, considered most important by entrepreneurs with most appren-tices.
And marketing skills were considered most important in the trade with the lowest av-erage
revenue, that is, by 84 per cent of women’s hairdressers, as compared to half of the
radio repair people, who typically earned twice as much.
While it is not surprising that those who could read and write had learned it in school,
most of the other generic skills on the list, had been acquired on the job and often during ap-prenticeship.
Pre-employment vocational training was not usually mentioned as a source of
such skills and competencies, except by electrical repair people and cyber café owners re-ferring
to repairing machines and computer use.
Having verified that respondents who said that they had acquired a particular skill al-most
always attached importance to it, skill deficiencies, or training needs, could be as-sumed
to exist where entrepreneurs, who found certain skills important had not actually
acquired them.14 Thus it was found that, depending on the activity, applying for and manag-ing
credit, was considered an important skill by between 47 and 70 percent of respondents,
while between 26 and 40 per cent said that they knew how to do this. By subtraction, it can
be concluded that between 12 and 35 per cent of the entrepreneurs concerned might be in-terested
in and benefit from pertinent training.

Chart 5. Skills gap: Apply for and manage credit
80%
60%
40%
20%
Between 50 and 84 percent of respondents attached importance to marketing skills,
and between 36 and 68 per cent had acquired these. And book keeping, to cite a final
example, was considered important by between 24 and 69 per cent, while between 38 and
67 per cent of respondents, reportedly, mastered the tricks of that trade.
Chart 6. Skills gap: Marketing
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
Very or somewhat important Have the skill
21
0%

Chart 7. Skills gap: Book keeping
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
Interest in further training
Having established their education and training histories, and having looked into
possible skill gaps, the entrepreneurs in the sample were then asked whether, for the future,
there were subjects or skills they would like to learn or improve. Focusing first on subjects,
or particular skills, which had some relationship with their current activity, interest in fur-ther
training was expressed by more than 70 per cent of all the sample entrepreneurs. Not
surprisingly, all but two of those providing administrative and internet services were inter-ested
in further training, particularly in updating their skills in the use of computer hard-ware
and software. However, an interest in computer skills was also expressed by
respondents in other trades. Keen interest in further training existed also among car me-chanics
and people repairing refrigerators, radios and other electrical equipment. Although
at least half of entrepreneurs in each of the sample activities said to be interested in further
training, men’s tailors and those who were operating restaurants were somewhat less inter-ested
than others.
Eighty per cent of respondents considered further training in technical subjects more
important than further training in other subjects, such as management, marketing, or book
keeping. In response to a related question, namely why, if such training was so important,
they had not already done it, 60 per cent of those concerned said that they could not afford
the training fees. Another 19 per cent did not have the time for it, and nine per cent said that
the training they needed was not available.
Opinions were divided as concerns the most appropriate location for such further
training. One third of all respondents favoured a governmental institution, one third a
non-governmental, i.e. a private institution, and one third had either no preference or men-
22
20%

tioned another place, such as on the job or at home. It may be assumed that these answers re-flect,
to a large extent, what sort of training the respondents know to be provided by
different institutions. For example, two out of three of the entrepreneurs involved in admin-istrative
and internet services, answered that private providers were the best, if not the only
place to go. Asked about their preferred manner of training, a majority of respondents said
they favoured standard lecturing with demonstrations, as appropriate. One in four, how-ever,
was more interested in “hands on”, practical training and/or seminars.
Around half of the respondents said they might also be interested in further training
not immediately related to their current activities. Again, technical skills in general (and
computer skills in particular) scored much higher than marketing or management skills.
Some respondents mentioned foreign language skills and driving lessons. There should be
no doubt, therefore, if one goes by the results of this survey, that people who operate infor-mal
sector enterprises inYaoundé, are thinking of getting additional training. Indeed, when
asked, in a separate question, whether they would have liked to have gone further in their
studies, more than three in four respondents said that this was the case, with only limited
variation among the diverse activities.
23

Chapter 3: Informal Sector Enterprises
Nine out of ten respondents operated their business in a fixed location. In fact, almost
all of them did, if masons and carpenters are excluded. The activities were either carried out
where the operators lived, meaning at home, or in a separate location, such as a workshop
with a roof, a market place, a street corner, or a back-yard.
The literature on the informal sector likes to point out that the micro-enterprises mak-ing
up the sector, are typically unregistered. And there are commentators who habitually
explain that these enterprises don’t seek to be registered for fear of paying taxes. This is not
necessarily the case, however, of the large numbers who trade their wares in municipal mar-kets
and who pay rent (and/or a tax) for their stalls. Nor is it always true of enterprises in-volved
in manufacturing and in services such as those covered in the present sample. Most
of them are likely to pay at least local taxes for being where they are. Moreover, since ama-jority
appears to make use of electricity, one imagines that the utility company concerned
would know where to send the bills, even if the enterprise is not home-based. The registra-tion
issue is, therefore, supposedly, mainly a matter of who is being registered bywhomand
for what purposes.
That being said, only one in six of the sample enterprises reported to be inscribed on
the Commerce Register, which means that they had a number needed to collaborate with
public agencies. Only a handful of respondents (four per cent) was registered with the na-tional
social security administration (CNPS), which means that virtually none of the enter-prises
in the sample made payments towards the social protection of their personnel.
However, some 40 per cent of all sample entrepreneurs, and half of the respondents in five
out of the twelve sample activities, were known to government for having a tax-payers
and/or a SCIFE number. The latter concerns a register kept by the statistical department of
the Ministry of Finance.
Only relatively few, on average one in six of the respondents, were members of an as-sociation
of artisans, or similar grouping. Car mechanics (23 per cent), hairdressers (22 per
cent), construction workers and restaurant operators (20 per cent), were somewhat more
likely than others to be thus organised.
Creation and age of the enterprise
Three out of four enterprises in the sample had been created by their current operator.
Most of these operators (60 per cent) had started the enterprise with their own savings; an
other 19 per cent had relied on gifts or loans from family members or friends; and five per
25

cent had relied on a rotating savings and credit association (tontine). Remarkably, 13 per
cent said that they had started without any money, and only one per cent mentioned credit
from a bank.
The conventional wisdom that informal sector enterprises may grow like mushrooms
but die like flies, is put to the test by finding out how long the living ones have been in busi-ness
15. At the time of interviewing their operators, almost half (46 per cent) of the sample
enterprises had existed two years or less. Included were thirteen per cent that had existed
less than six months. At the other end of the range, twenty per cent had existed nine years or
more. The average (mean) age for the sample enterprises combined, was 5.2 years. Restau-rants,
cyber cafés (which, of course, nobody had heard of until a few years ago), and hair-dressing
shops, all activities, by the way, with a majority of female entrepreneurs, were
found to be, on average, less than three years old. The enterprises of wood workers, men’s
tailors and construction workers, almost exclusively operated by men, were found to be, on
average, more than seven-and-a-half years old. Surely, one should be careful not to jump to
conclusions, as a range of factors is likely to influence the average age of enterprises, in-cluding
the age, sex and skills of the entrepreneur, the current popularity of the trade, and
current demand for the goods and services produced. That being said, it seems fair to con-clude
that a considerable proportion of the informal sector enterprises in the sample had
passed the critical start-up period, and, therefore, to suggest that they had shown to be via-ble.
Chart 8. Percentage of sample enterprises by age of enterprise
26
20%
18%
16%
14%
12%
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
0%
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 22 23 24 25 27 28 30 36 40
Age of the sample enterprises (years)
Percentage of enterprises
15 When unable to calculate average life expectancy, one may draw inferences about viability from the average age
of a population. That being said, the conventional wisdom referred to, supposedly, compares informal with
formal enterprises, which we do not.

Size of the enterprise and worker characteristics
While theYaoundé sample was designed to capture sufficiently large numbers of en-terprises
involved in selected economic activities, it was not stratified so as to exclude, a
priori, enterprises beyond a certain level of employment. That being the case, a total of
2274 people were found to be working in the 682 sample enterprises, or 3.3 per enterprise,
including the entrepreneur. Average enterprise size varied by activity, between 1.6 for
leather workers and 2.2 in restaurants, and, at the other end, 5.7 for construction trades and
6.1 in garages, always including the entrepreneur. The latter two activities were the only
ones in the sample with a significant proportion, namely almost half of all enterprises, hav-ing
more than five workers. However, in less than three per cent of all enterprises in the
sample, employment exceeded 10 workers, while no enterprise had more than 20 workers.
In almost one in four (24%) of all sample enterprises, the entrepreneur was working alone.
Two out of three enterprises had up to three workers including the entrepreneur. In other
words, micro-enterprises were the norm, and if size were the key variable in classifying en-terprises
as either formal or informal, the present sample would easily qualify as essentially
informal.
Chart 9. Number of persons, including the entrepreneur, having worked in the
enterprise during the preceding week, percentages of all enterprises in
the sample
27
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 15 16 18 20
Number of persons having worked in
the enterprise in the preceding week
Percentage of enterprises

Almost all (659) of the respondents provided some additional information about
1320 other workers in their enterprises, 347 of them women workers16. They were 687 ap-prentices
(including 207 women), and a total of 633 workers with another status, namely,
131 business partners, 307 permanent and 102 occasional wage- workers, and 93 unpaid
family helpers. Simplifying matters, one might say that an average informal sector enter-prise,
involved in activities such as those covered by the sample, consisted of the boss and
two co-workers, namely, the apprentice and someone else.
Table 6. Employment in sample enterprises, by activity, by employment status, as a
percentage of total employed including the owner/entrepreneur
ACTIVITY
owner partner
w.
worker
fam. aid apprent total
% % % % % no.
Women’s dressmakers 31 2 13 4 49 170
Men’s tailors 44 7 8 1 40 109
Women’s hairdressers 37 4 14 6 40 198
Wood workers 28 4 30 9 28 250
Car mechanics 20 11 18 0 51 251
Masons, carpenters 24 12 37 1 26 216
Radio & electr. repair 37 8 12 3 40 114
Leather workers 62 6 4 5 22 81
Restaurants 42 7 36 12 3 146
Admin. serv./ cyber cafés 35 6 34 3 22 133
Refrigeration repair 37 6 5 7 45 115
Metal workers 35 5 16 7 38 196
TOTAL SAMPLE 33 7 21 5 35 1979
Twenty-one per cent of all those working in sample enterprises, worked for wages,
and three out of four of them were permanent, as opposed to occasional employees. Not
surprisingly, a relatively large share of the occasional wage-workers in the sample (30 per
cent) worked in construction firms, whose workers are known to move from job to job (and
from firm to firm). In restaurants there were relatively high shares of permanent
wage-workers and unpaid family helpers (35 and 12 per cent of total employment, respec-tively).
While apprentices were common in all sample activities, except restaurants, they
represented half of total employment in garages and in the workshops of women’s dress-makers.
16 The 23 enterprises that did not answer a set of questions for each of the persons they employed, were, primarily,
28
the relatively larger enterprises of wood workers, car mechanics and construction trades. These non-respondents
employed, together, 295 workers, or an average of 12.8 each, including the entrepreneur. Thus, the total number
of workers in the sample enterprises was 2,274.

Three out of four co-workers did not belong to the owner/entrepreneur’s family. And
those who were related, were not usually a spouse or child. This finding seems to belie the
notion that informal sector enterprises are mostly family affairs. Activity-wise, family
members were most present in restaurants (45 per cent of co-workers) and least present in
garages and radio repair services (13 percent of co-workers).
Whereas the entrepreneurs in the sample were, typically, in their mid-thirties, their
co-workers tended to be younger, that is, partners and wage-workers were, on average, in
their late twenties, while unpaid family helpers and apprentices were, on average, in their
early twenties. Child labour was hardly an issue in the sample enterprises. Out of the 2274
workers covered in the survey, one was ten years old, five were twelve, one was thirteen,
and twenty-one were fourteen years old. As concerns gender, a fairly strict segmentation
was observed, in that male entrepreneurs appeared to employ other men, while female en-trepreneurs
employed other women, except perhaps in the case of the male tailors in the
sample who employed a significant number of female apprentices.
As was illustrated in an earlier section, sample entrepreneurs were relatively well ed-ucated,
albeit with considerable differences between activities. It appears that, as a group,
business partners and wage-workers were slightly less educated than owner/entrepreneurs,
while unpaid family helpers and apprentices were considerably less educated, possibly a
reflection of the collapse of the national education system in recent years.
Depending on their employment status, co-workers were paid different amounts in
different ways. Naturally, most owners and their business partners, if they had any, shared
what income was left after all expenses were paid, although some reported that they took a
fixed amount, or a fixed share of earnings, each week or month. In the case of the 409
wage-workers in the sample, 57 percent had fixed wages, 17 per cent worked on a
piece-rate basis, and the others received a share of whatever income was earned, presum-ably
at the discretion of the entrepreneur. Most of those paid at piece-rate were occasional
workers, notably so in the construction sector. About half of the apprentices received
pocket money, and one in six apprentices were said to earn wages, presumably at a lower
level of pay than regular wage-workers. Other apprentices earned in kind, or not at all.
Finally, and paradoxically perhaps, many of those listed as unpaid family helpers also re-ceived
some monetary reward for their work, mostly in the form of pocket money.
Working hours
Six days of nine or ten hours each, appeared to be a standard working week for those
who were working in the sample enterprises, with only minor variations among the selected
activities, and by employment status. In other words, whether entrepreneur or
wage-worker, unpaid helper or apprentice, whether working in a garage, or in a restaurant,
or in the workshop of a wood- or metalworker, almost all reported to work somewhere be-tween
54 and 60 hours per week. Surely, it seems unlikely that all of the workers were per-manently
busy. In many instances, it may be assumed, given low levels of productivity, that
workers present in the workplace, and ready to work, were actually waiting for customers.
29

Technology and equipment
A question was included in the survey about the use made of electricity for purposes
other than lighting, considering that this would yield a rough indicator, both of the physical
circumstances in which enterprises operated, and of their level of technology. In fact, elec-tricity
use was found to be widespread. In seven of the twelve sample activities almost all
enterprises said they used it.Well over half of the wood and the leather workers, and of the
car mechanics in the sample, also used electricity. The only activities in which electricity
users represented a minority (30%) were, not surprisingly, what are mostly open air restau-rants
and construction firms.
In order to obtain a general impression of the sort of equipment available, sample entre-preneurs
were asked, inter alia, whether or not, in their enterprise, they used hand tools, elec-trical
tools, machines, technical manuals, safety gear, measuring tapes, calculators and/or
computers, and a car perhaps, and a telephone. And they did, in varying degrees. Almost all,
in all trades, used hand tools, and many used electrical equipment. The common reliance on
technical manuals and brochures, as illustrated in the table below, is another rough indicator
of technological sophistication, or perhaps the lack of it. And so is the use of security equip-ment,
such as protective gloves, eyeglasses or boots. Computers are, naturally, concentrated
in cyber cafés, providing administrative and internet services, but they also begin to show up
in other trades. Telephones, often of the mobile variety, are increasingly common. Cars were
owned by twelve per cent of the sample entrepreneurs, including one third of the car mechan-ics.
In contrast, there were only half a dozen sample entrepreneurs who said they used bicy-cles
or motorbikes.
Table 7. Percentage of entrepreneurs using certain tools and equipment, by activity
ACTIVITY
elec.
equipt.
ma-chines
technical
manuals
safety
gear
calcula-tor
com-puter
tele-phone
Women’s dressmakers 91 24 28 15 35 2 31
Men’s tailors 96 6 51 6 26 4 15
Women’s hairdressers 95 12 27 36 23 0 19
Wood workers 60 37 40 33 41 1 26
Car mechanics 42 38 30 51 32 2 38
Masons, carpenters 32 26 43 49 53 8 42
Radio & electr. repairs 98 16 60 26 33 16 53
Leather workers 55 20 6 4 10 0 10
Restaurants 31 2 8 11 25 0 15
Cyber cafés 94 23 38 17 57 81 60
Refrigeration repair 82 31 44 47 49 29 29
Metal workers 86 27 21 73 48 3 34
TOTAL SAMPLE 71 22 32 32 36 11 30
30

Performance of the enterprise
It is notoriously difficult, simply by asking, to learn precisely how much money is be-ing
made in enterprises such as included in the present sample. There is first the problem of
reaching a common understanding of what exactly is to be measured, and, secondly, of ob-taining
a, more or less, correct answer to the pertinent question. While the latter problem
may be mitigated by correcting for extremes, and by assuming that respondents tend to un-der-
or over-report by similar margins, the former, conceptual problem, represents a risk of
comparing apples and oranges. Naturally, if measuring enterprise performance engenders
the risk of not getting it quite right, one should be careful in trying to demonstrate how dif-ferences
in performance relate to variables such as concerning the entrepreneur’s education
and training. Keeping this in mind, the main aim in discussing the performance of sample
enterprises, is to present orders of magnitude and significant differences among activities.
A modest attempt will then be made to relate differences in performance to certain charac-teristics
of the sample entrepreneurs.
A first, rough indicator of enterprise performance concerns monthly business turn-over,
or gross revenue. Results for the sample as a whole, corrected by eliminating “ex-treme”
values17, suggest an average (mean) monthly turnover of around Fcfa 235,000
(US$305) The mean, may present a somewhat inflated picture, however, as a consequence
of there being a few enterprises in the sample with relatively high revenues. The median,
which, with half of the sample enterprises on either side, provides perhaps a better perspec-tive,
was Fcfa 150,000 (US$ 195). The bottom twenty-five percent of enterprises took in
Fcfa 70,000 or less, while the top twenty-five per cent took in Fcfa 300,000 or more. The
latter figure implies that three out of four enterprises took in less than US$ 400 per month,
confirming the fact that the sample essentially consists of micro-enterprises.
Obviously, income figures vary considerably among activities, as is illustrated both
in Table 8 and Chart 10 below. The lowest average (mean) gross revenue per enterprise was
recorded for leather workers, at Fcfa 106,000 (US$ 138), with half of them taking in less
than Fcfa 60,000 (US$78) per month. Women’s hairdressers were next, at an average of
Fcfa 125,000 (US$ 162) per month, and with half of these enterprises making Fcfa 84,000
(US$ 109) or less. At the other end of the spectrum were restaurants and woodworkers, and,
outstripping all the others, construction enterprises, the latter with average monthly gross
revenues at Fcfa 506,000 (US$ 657) and half of the respondents taking in Fcfa 360,000
(US$ 468) or more.
The fact that income among enterprises engaged in the same activity is far from
evenly distributed may be concluded from substantive differences between mean and me-dian
figures as included in Table 8. It is also illustrated in Chart 11, presenting first, second
and third quartile gross revenue ceilings for each of the sample activities. Thus one finds,
for example, that, in the case of women’s dress makers, 25 per cent of enterprises took in
31
17 The “correction” eliminates ten per cent of responses in total, that is, five per cent at the top and five per cent at the
bottom end of the range. Gross revenue for the remaining ninety per cent of enterprises ranges between Fcfa
24,000 (US$31) and Fcfa 1,450,000 (US$1,883) with a mean of Fcfa 235,000. If one per cent of responses had
been left out at both ends of the range, the mean turnover would have been Fcfa 282,000. Without any correction,
the mean turnover would have been Fcfa 363,000.

less than Fcfa 70,000 in gross revenue, that half of the enterprises took in less than Fcfa
150,000, and that 75 per cent took in less than Fcfa 244,000. In the case of restaurants, the
corresponding quartiles were Fcfa 150,000, Fcfa 257,000 and Fcfa 400,000.
Chart 10. Median of net and gross revenues, per activity, in '000 Fcfa
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
As value added may differ considerably between different activities, net revenues,
that is, gross revenues minus the costs of all inputs, may be judged a better indicator, for
comparing enterprise performance. Caution is again urged, however, in taking the net data
too literally, as they are the debatable outcome of subtracting one, roughly, estimated
amount from another. That being said, it seems abundantly clear that the entrepreneurs in
this sample, more often than not, were left with only modest gains. Half of the enterprises of
leatherworkers, who, as noted earlier, were the least educated among the sample entrepre-neurs,
were left with less than Fcfa 33,000 (US$43) per month after all inputs had been paid
for, and the bottom 25 per cent of enterprises netted, at best, half that amount . In the middle
of the net income range were women’s dressmakers, cyber cafés and restaurants. For
example, the quartiles values for restaurants were Fcfa 35,000, Fcfa 84,000 and Fcfa
185,000. Average net revenue per construction enterprise per month, was calculated to be
Fcfa 364,000 (US$ 473), with half of the enterprises netting Fcfa 225,000 (US$ 292) or
more. In the case of the construction trades, however, it is not always easy to distinguish net
earnings and labour costs, as entrepreneurs, typically operate in ad-hoc consortia of differ-ent
specialists.
32
50
Net revenues
Gross revenues

Chart 11. Gross revenue ceilings, per quartile and per activity
600
500
400
300
200
100
An admittedly crude indicator of labour productivity is obtained by dividing gross
revenue by the total number of workers in the enterprise, irrespective of their employment
status and their hours of work. It is also an income indicator, in as much as output per
worker represents the base (or rather the ceiling) for individual earnings. Thus, median
gross revenues per worker were the highest, at Fcfa 120,000 for restaurants and the lowest,
at Fcfa 30,000 for hairdressers, a difference which is plausible given the much lower share
of labour in total costs in the case of restaurants. In any case, figures of this magnitude sug-gest
average earnings, for most workers, and irrespective of the activity they are involved
in, of not much more than a dollar per day.
33
0
25% of enterprises
50% of enterprises
75% of enterprises

SKILLS AND WORK INFORMAL SECTOR CAMEROON

SKILLS AND WORK INFORMAL SECTOR CAMEROON

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