No sooner had he taken office as MD of the French Development Agency (AFD), on June 2, 2016, than Remy Rioux landed in Cameroon a week later, for the first stop of his African tour.

During this journey, which also led him to Senegal where he arrived on Sunday, the new MD of AFD exchanged with the Cameroonian authorities on the portfolio of AFD in the country, and mainly on the 3rd C2D with an envelope of FCFA 394 billion, to be signed in this month of June between France and Cameroon.

This 3rd debt relief and development contract will then bring to FCFA 960 billion the global amount of the C2D in favour of Cameroon (since reaching the point of completion of the HIPC initiative in 2006), a country increasingly attracting the attention of China, and whose economic cooperation with all the emerging countries is intensifying year on year.

For example, according to the statistics of the French embassy in Yaoundé, AFD’s financial commitments in Cameroon were estimated at approximately FCFA 1,000 billion per year.

At the same time, the Cameroonian Ministry of Economy was announcing a portfolio of investments worth FCfa 1,200 billion for three emerging countries, namely China, India and South Korea.

With roughly 70% of foreign direct investment (FDI) received by Cameroon over the 2000-2014 period, China has become the main investor in Cameroon, according to the Cooperation Directorate of the Ministry of Economy.