| Project Detail |
The Japan-funded project "Promoting public health by improving the national supply chain capacity for medical products for increased resilience against COVID-19"(SAP 210174) was successfuly implemented by UNIDO from April 2022 to August 2023. As part of the communication with the donor focal point, UNIDO indicated, in late 2022, our readiness as well as aspiration to develop a futrue project to continue the project-level committment to the national development agenda in the framework of Japan-UNIDO partnership. Although UNIDO team conitunuously followed up the status of the discussion, there had been no advancement and updates from the donor side due to their limited financial availability allocated to Cameroon. The discussion about the future funding reopened in the end of 2023 by Japan as a potentially available fund had been identified. The donor focal point verbally/informally expressed that the primary targets of the fund are 1)business/trade partnership with the donor in the context of private sector development; 2)well-alingned objectives with other ongoing committment by Japan; 3) to catalyze sustainable technologies in industrial contexts. The budget size will be dependant on the available budget in the donor’s planning and it is expected to be influenced by other projects as well. Based on the communication, UNIDO estimates a project budget volume of 1.5 million USD. Further discussions are required to define the final budget size. Additionally, the Embassy fo Japan has shared the following priorities:- Cameroon has achieved a real economic growth rate of an annual average of 3.4% by trading raw materials, such as oil and timber. However, this seemingly strong economic growth has not reached the whole nation; it has not yet contributed to the improvement of the living standards of a majority of citizens. Because of this challenge, the Cameroonian government set the private sector development as one of the important sectors to tackle as part of its policy for further economic growth. - The rate of the population living below the poverty line has not changed much from 40.2% in 2001 to 39% in 2007. Since the population is increasing, the total number of the poor is increasing and most of them live in the rural areas (85% of the poor lived in the rural areas in 2001 and 89% in 2007). While about 3% of economic growth is marked every year (2003-2006), deterioration of the level of poverty in the rural areas remains a serious issue. Against such backgrounds, the proposal has been developed to contribute to the promotion of degitalization and advanced technologies in the country to realize sustainable trade competence of key Cameroonian domestic products and international business partnerships. This project intends to provide the selected value chain actors, MSMEs, and national governmental officers through the tailored assistance to adapting digital/advanced tools and technologies for traceability, quality and resource optimization in order to maximize the development potential of the Cameroonian key trade products. Less |
