Allemagne - Dr.Stephan Liebing - " We are not going to convince investors if we always talk about problems in Cameroon "

With about 700 members and approximately 25 partner organisations in Africa, Afrika-verein, the German-African Business Association in Germany, is the main point of contact in Germany for the African public and private sector, serving as their gateway to German enterprises with business interests in Africa.

Dr. Stefan Liebing, the president of its chairmanship who we met during the SOBA Foundation early August 2013 in Essen seized this opportunity to appeal German industry, under certain contributions, not to miss the boat of investment in Cameroon and invited camer.be sometimes to publish success stories to convince investors.

Dr. Stephan Liebing, you have just attended the SOBA Foundation Forum in Essen, what are your impressions?

I very much like the forum. I think we have a great community of Cameroonian diaspora in Germany; they are highly qualified , they are in key positions in German industry. So we should try to make more use of this potential in getting more German industry to look into opportunities in Cameroon and to go and invest there.

How does Dr.Stephan Liebing find the state of economical relations between Germany and Cameroon?

In fact, I believe a lot of German industry is about to miss the boat for, a lot is developed in Cameroon recently to the positive mainly; there are still problems but I think there are still a lot more that could be done at the moment and that´s why I believe there are a lot of rooms for doing business together , for more Germans to come and invest. In order to convince them that Cameroon is better than they might think, it´s important to have big projects that is what companies like Ferrostaal AG, the fertilizer ,are actually working at the moment.

How does the German government appreciate the Cameroonian diaspora in their country?

I mean for almost 30 years, there was no government officials travelling from Germany to Cameroon and this has changed; during the last 2 years, we had 4 official visits with ministers, vice ministers, etc.... So I think, people are about to learn in the German government that Cameroon should play an important role in bilateral relations and the fact that there is more and more business developing, that Germans are doing business in Cameroon will also lead to higher political attention in Berlin.

Cameroon is known to be a stable country in Africa, but do you think corruption and democracy problems seem to discourage many German investors to invest more than they can ?

Of course that is a general problem in Africa. I think corruption on low level in the hierarchy is still a very important problem. Some of the mitigation for that is really to make sure you have higher supports in the government that usually mean that people are forced to support projects without asking bribes, and the bad reputation Cameroon has on corruption is certainly an aspect of German industry not going as far as it is expected. On the other hand, my impression of doing business is lower than the impression of others who will be doing business in German industry.May be the reputation is worst than the reality at the moment.

There is a lot of support, there are senior signs from the government to do business on a stable way, to provide the right legal framework and to make sure there is no attempts for any corrupted practice when it comes to German Industry doing business here.

As you said, once a month you meet an African Head of State; what should they do to improve their economical relations with Germany?

I do meet a lot of African Head of States when they come to Germany because they all want to discuss about business relations, not only political matters which they do with politicians. I am not in the state to give them advice, but what I think is that, there are certain contributions needed from african governments. There are aspects that German industry and government need, that we can work together more effectively and more successfully,but what we need is providing a stable framework, make sure that we have independent working system of justice, of court, a clear legal framework. We want to see fair elections, we want to see a system that is free of corruption.

Otherwise, German industry can work and what you see is that, there is a huge difference between certain countries in Africa and others when it comes to German investors to invest. And that is the reason why nobody can´t invest in Zimbabwe or why there is very limited German activities going on in Angola because we can´t and don´t want to do these things.

So, we need a good framework and once the reputation has come over to Germany that things are changing in the country, I hope we will see more business going on.

May we end this interview where it started. You said earlier that you know camer.be, what could be your suggestions?

I like camer.be very much because I think first of all, it provides important news that I don´t get from other sources when I am not in Cameroon; and secondly I think, camer.be should be a mixture of critical texts, because as I said, there are still more problems, and it´s important that the public is aware and things change by increasing pressure on the government; but in the other hand also, you should publish more success stories.

We are not going to convince investors if we always talk about problems and never about approaches like how we can solve them and about success stories we have in this country.

Is your Organisation ready to supply camer.be with such success stories to be published ?

Of course, I am. We have a full-time media person in our office in Berlin, so I will put you together in touch since you live in Germany.