21 April 2016 was the closing day to subscribe to the shareholding capital of GIC Eneo, an entity which will own 5% of the capital of Eneo Cameroon reserved for the employees, we learned in an official communiqué.

The persons concerned by these subscriptions, the communiqué highlighted, are the current employees of Eneo, public concessionaire in charge of the electricity in the country, and the former employees of the company put on retirement between 11 July 2001 and 21 April 2016.

To support the company in this operation meant to meet a clause of the buyout, in 2014, of 56% of the shares of this electric company by the British investment fund Actis, GIC Eneo retained the services of the company Activa.

One can recall that the retrocession of these shares belonging to the workforce was a major source of contention between the management of this company and its employees, at a time when the Cameroonian electric company was still owned by the American firm AES.

When the departure of AES was announced, the unions in the electricity sector had even brought back the issue to the table, and invited the Cameroonian authorities to give more attention to the retrocession of 5% of the capital of the company to the workforce, before allowing the remainder to be dealt in the transaction between AES and the British fund Actis.

As a reminder, at the time of the privatisation of the electricity sector in Cameroon in 2001, the distribution of the capital of what used to be AES Sonel (currently Eneo since its takeover by Actis) was as follows: 44% for the State of Cameroon and 56% for the American group AES, including 5% to be given back to the workforce, according to the concession contract.

But when officially leaving Cameroon in May 2014, some 13 years after the privatisation of Sonel, (Société Nationale d’Electricité), AES has still not returned the 5% in capital shares to the employees, an operation which Actis has been trying to conclude since its entry on the Cameroonian electricity market.