The DGRV’s work in Cameroon focuses on expanding access to financial services in agriculture and rural areas. In cooperation with the cooperative umbrella organisation MUFID-Union, the project aims to provide affordable credit, savings, and payment services to all population groups, particularly those with limited resources. Capacity building and training activities additionally strengthen the financial literacy of cooperative members and improve the resilience of rural communities.
Although Cameroon’s economy generates significant income from exports of cocoa, timber, bananas, and rubber, two thirds of agricultural production comes from smallholder farming, often at subsistence level. Farmers frequently lack access to investment capital, infrastructure, and seasonal credit. Cooperative financial institutions exist, but more than 70% of their lending flows to non-agricultural sectors and urban clients. In addition, barriers such as missing collateral, limited borrower information, and insufficient technical knowledge of agriculture hinder financial inclusion of smallholders.
DGRV supports MUFID-Union in developing and rolling out modern agricultural finance products tailored to the needs of smallholders. Central elements of the cooperation include:
advisory services for digitalisation (e.g. core banking systems, reporting tools),
improvement of governance structures and internal control mechanisms,
training of young professionals and women to build long-term sector expertise.
This approach helps professionalise cooperative financial structures and enables them to use their high liquidity more effectively for agricultural lending.
In the next phase, cooperation with supervisory authorities is planned to ensure a continuous adaptation of the regulatory framework. The aim is to strengthen corporate governance and risk management in microfinance institutions and to enable sustainable growth of the sector.
This project is supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
Our project in Cameroon contributes to several Sustainable Development Goals, especially:
Holger Grimm
Christiana Donchi
Olivia Simo
The Union des Mutuelles Financières de Développement is the Apex-Body of the MUFID network in Cameroon. The MUFID network has more than 110 service points in the ten regions of Cameroon and has more than 250,000 members. It is a microfinance institution of the first category as classified by the Banking Commission of Central Africa (COBAC). It was created on 30/10/2019, registered in the Register of Cooperatives on 22/11/2019, approved by COBAC on 17/12/2019 and accredited by the Monetary Authority of Cameroon on 22/04/2020.
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