Building Business Skills in Cameroon

For many years, Tani Aumtu ran a small business selling food in her hometown of Kumbo, located about 60 miles (995km) from Bamenda, the capital city of the Northwest region of Cameroon. With the money she made from her business, she supported her husband in providing for their family’s needs and send their three children to school.

Tani Aumtu (left), a project participant for the Anglophone Crisis Emergency Response project (ACER), talks with Beri Blessing, a CRS staff member, about the effects of the ongoing conflict on her family.

Photo by Eugene Ringnyuy/CRS

In early 2023, as an ongoing crisis in the region escalated, several houses in her neighborhood were burned and looted, including Tani’s. She and her family left Kumbo in July 2023 to resettle in Bamenda.

Tani and her spouse faced difficulties in providing food and the basic needs for their family. Her husband began taking small jobs at construction sites to provide for the family. With the little money he made, Tani was able to start selling fried doughnuts by the roadside. Buyers were mostly school children from a nearby school.

Tani Aumtu (striped dress) is attending to students who are regular clients at her small fast-food business in a public school in Northwest Cameroon.

Photo by Eugene Ringnyuy/CRS

In June 2024, Catholic Relief Services launched the fifth phase of the Anglophone Crisis Emergency Response project (ACER V). Funded by the US Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, the project supports conflict-affected families living in very vulnerable conditions to meet their basic food and household needs and improve their livelihoods.

The project provides electronic voucher cards to participants which they use to buy food from contracted vendors in their community. ACER V also trains selected participants in business skills so that they can create and manage sustainable businesses to generate steady income.

Tani and her family were registered as participants in the ACER V project. In September 2024, Tani used her voucher to purchase food such as rice, spaghetti, cooking oil, fish and groundnuts for more nutritious meals.

Tani Aumtu presents her business plan to a panel of Caritas and CRS staff after attending a training on business skills.

Photo by Eugene Ringnyuy/CRS

“The months of September and October are usually very tough months for my family,” says Tani Aumtu. “The money we make within the year, we spend all on registering our kids in school and so we can barely eat.”

Tani also sought permission from the nearby school administratio to sell fried doughnuts within the school campus. Tani began assisting three of her sister’s children whose education has been disrupted in Kumbo because of the crisis.

In October 2024, Tani was selected to attend a business skills development training in Achichem, a locality in the Bamenda I subdivision. She learned how to develop a business plan, how to manage business cash flow and how to improve sales through innovation and marketing.

“I used to sell and spend all the profit on whatever I needed,” says Tani Aumtu.” I was never thinking about saving up for bad days.”

Tani intends to save more so that she can expand her business and cover any risks she may face in the future. She hopes to run a successful business so that she can support her husband to send their children to the university and build a house of their own in Bamenda. 

The ACER project is funded by USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance and implemented by Catholic Relief Services in collaboration with the Archdiocese of Bamenda. In its fourth phase, the project responded to the basic needs of 10,800 internally displaced individuals and host families in 19 communities affected by the ongoing crisis in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions. In its fifth phase, ACER plans to support 465 families with cash grants for business. Through business skills trainings, the project empowers participants with skills and resources needed to create and manage their small businesses, and generate a steady income Over the past four years, CRS, and the Archdiocese of Bamenda have provided emergency assistance to more than 100,000 people in the Northwest with funding from USAID/BHA.  

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