A friend of mine recently drew my attention to a writing competition with the above title as subject. For what it’s worth, the said competition was open only to undergraduate students; since I am unfortunate enough to no longer be an undergraduate, I was not eligible.

However, I think the question itself merits attention, especially because of recent trends. Because of corruption and many other ills, many people have lost all faith in governments (not only in Cameroon, but all over Africa). As such, we have witnessed the birth of many initiatives geared at promoting entrepreneurship amongst youth, as some sort of a panacea to all of the ills plaguing Africa. It would be interesting to wonder whether those initiatives are as justified we would like to think they are.

For starters, I find the question a little ambiguous, as it is not clear what the “better future” refers to, and what scale we are dealing with. For the purposes of this article, I would assume that “better future” refers to higher standards of living – more wealth, less financial stress, better education and healthcare, etc.

If we are talking about individuals, the answer would be yes . Cameroonians can entrepreneur themselves to a better future. It is precisely for this reason many Cameroonians (or anybody else, for that matter) decide to become entrepreneurs – to make more money, which can then afford them better lifestyles - the said better future.

However, if we are talking about the national scale, the question changes slightly. It is no longer about whether Cameroonians can entrepreneur themselves to a better future, but whether Cameroonians can entrepreneur [the entire nation of] Cameroon to a better future.

The intuitive answer to this would still be yes. We all associate entrepreneurship with initiative, dynamism, and creation of opportunity. It should therefore follow that any country with a good number of entrepreneurs should have certain levels of dynamism and opportunity.

However, before saying anything definite on the matter, perhaps we should flip the question around, and ask ourselves the following question: Is Cameroon’s present not as “better” as it should be for want of entrepreneurs in its past? Were Cameroonians of the past less entrepreneurial? And, if yes, is it true that if only they had been a little more entrepreneurial, the country would be better than it is today?

This is a little difficult for me to answer with any measure of certainty, because I couldn’t find any data on the entrepreneurial activity of Cameroonians in the past. What I did find, though, is a paper by two Cameroonian economists, who associated the reduction in poverty levels and the increase in GDP per capita in the country during the 34-year period from 1980 to 2013 to an increase in entrepreneurial activity.

This makes sense, but the said reduction could be as a result of [a combination of] other trends – say, more people getting access to basic education, more Cameroonians travelling abroad and sending money back home, etc.

However, for the sake of argument, let’s concede, and say that there was indeed some level of entrepreneurial activity, which was accompanied by positive results. However, most people would agree would me that if they were asked to imagine, in 1980, what a better future should look like in 2013, the present state of the country would not be what they would have conceived. In fact, I suspect that their image of a better future would closely resemble what we have in mind today when we think about it. So, is it that entrepreneurship in itself could not deliver on the promise of creating the kind of future our fathers dreamed about? Or were there too few entrepreneurs to make a difference? Or were they doing the wrong kind of entrepreneurship?

To get a clearer picture, let us look at the situation today. A study by Approved Index ranks Cameroon fourth in terms of number of entrepreneurs per capita in the world – only surpassed by Uganda, Thailand and Brazil. This is evidence that Cameroon is already a very entrepreneurial nation. If these statistics are indeed true, and entrepreneurship is all it takes to improve the national situation, then it should follow that Cameroonians should already be living in the said “better future”, or at least should be at its shores - not leaving the country to search for better futures in Countries with lower entrepreneurship rates… like the USA. At the very least, we should already be confident that sooner than later, we will reach the Promised Land. However, the very fact that we are asking ourselves whether we can entrepreneur ourselves to it is indicative of our lack of confidence in the present state of things – very few Cameroonians would say that if things continued the way they are, the next 30 years would see us somewhere desirable.

But then, we have the numbers on our side. So, the problem is not a lack of entrepreneurs, but elsewhere. Where then?

[A part of] The answer, I would suggest, lies in the kind of entrepreneurship that Cameroonians engage in. Most of the businesses run by Cameroonians are small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs), which employ relatively few people, and use little advanced technology.

The word “entrepreneur” is a large umbrella word – encompassing both the CEO of a multinational company and the lady selling fish on the street. And for good reason: the woman roasting fish and selling on the streets is every bit as concerned about profits, losses, inventories and production as the CEO; they are simply operating on different scales.

However, they do not make the same contributions to the economy. Besides the difference in their ability to create jobs, one person has the ability to build hospitals and schools through corporate social responsibility, the other does not. One of them has the ability to improve a nation’s economy on the macro level, the other does not. And entrepreneurship is not cumulative: many small companies do not add up to give one big one.

This is significant, as it highlights a problem not peculiar to Cameroon, but common to less-developed countries. This study on the effect of entrepreneurship on economic growth showed that entrepreneurial activity was beneficial for first-world countries, but detrimental for the poorer countries. The authors suggested, and I concur, that this is because there are not enough larger companies present in those countries, benefitting from economies of scale and scope. And, I would add, compete internationally.

I do not mean to sound crass, but there is no international market for roasted fish, or boiled corn. Most nations that have the kinds of society Cameroonians would like to have developed those societies not only by selling, but by producing value for global markets, by creating the kind of wealth that was demanded beyond their boundaries. Cameroon is already a very entrepreneurial nation, but we cannot create a “better future” for ourselves if the symbols of our entrepreneurial spirit, the emblems of our ambition, remain those who engage in low-level production.

A good example of a nation that has built a “better future” for itself through entrepreneurship is Israel. In their book Startup Nation, Dan Senor and Saul Singer explain the story of Israel’s manifold economic growth. There are quite a number of factors responsible for this growth (military service, lack of respect for formal hierarchy, etc.), but the part relevant to this essay is the kind of entrepreneurship they practiced – high level, primarily technology-based, and sold to global markets… like the US. The country is a small one, with about 7 million people – it will never be a large market in itself. However, they are able to produce at a very high level, and supply value to the global economy.

So, yes; entrepreneurship can pave the way for a better future in Cameroon. But then, not just any kind of entrepreneurship. The kind that will do that is that which is bold, and outrageously ambitious. The kind which will look beyond satisfying only the needs of the entrepreneur and his/her family, and seek to generate wealth for thousands of others. The kind that will harness the (natural and human resources) of the country, transform them, and then sell to the rest of the world. Anything short of that will not do.