The 8-day international event for economic growth ended in Douala Saturday, November 24.

One of the legacies of the just ended International Forum for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in the economic capital is job and wealth creation and employment opportunities young people have received.

In an economy like Cameroon, where young people hunger and taste for jobs and have made up their mind to make use of every opportunity irrespective of choice, the forum was a timely fertile ground for most to be grounded in various income-generation skills. Throughout the forum, code-named PMExchange, a good number of the youths have been exposed to job providers in need of the skills learned. That is why young Tjega, a varsity student, said the week will run down her memories as a lifetime opportunity in which she made and received job proposals, having also discovered new talents.

Throughout the forum the youths had daily training during which they discovered fallow grounds for projects and obtained fitting training. That they were taught how to appropriate the skills than just the gathering of a wealth of expertise makes the event distinctive and rare. Earlier on, Mathieu Mandeng, President of APECAM, underlined the major role played by SMEs in economic growth, job creation and social cohesion.

Diverse topics all aimed at improving on national economic growth were discussed. Focus was on telework as a mine of opportunities for entrepreneurship; youth employment; development of e-business in SMEs as performance factor; call centres and offshoring; advertising; cries and amusements of the media boom in Cameroon; constraints and difficulties of entrepreneurship; opportunities offered by the Cameroon cultural market; how to include enterprises in national cultural markets; support for professional training and the financing of SMEs by banks, are just few of the many areas tackled during the forum.

Shortly after the official closing of the forum, a spectacularly cultural evening was offered in the auditorium of the Party House in Bonanjo. The gala thrown to the enjoyment and appetite of a business public which despite their enthusiasm for music, would only find rare opportunities to relax before popular stars and local music legends on the gallery of Makossa, Bikutsi and other popular genres of nowadays for rare pleasure and joy as it was throughout Saturday night .

Beside the massive participation of Government Ministers and authorities of the Littoral Region, the forum witnessed the participation of the European Union Ambassador in Yaounde, who was at the Forum on Wednesday, in addition to some seven foreign enterprises, like UBIFrance, which secured partnerships with local SMEs.