Côte d'Ivoire and Cameroon will soon be linked by a formal trade agreement to be signed in the coming weeks according to the Cameroonian Trade Minister Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana.

The announcement was made lately during the official opening of the CEMAC (Fotrac) border at Kye-Ossi, a bordering town of Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.

According to a member of the Cameroon government it is now recognized as the first African economic power and is part of the will of the Cameroonian authorities to conquer new markets, and play a partition in the concert of African integration.

As a reminder, at the end of Ivorian-Cameroon Mixed Commission, which was completed March 7, 2014 in Abidjan, after 33 years of hibernation, the two countries had already signed ten agreements in the fields of agriculture, education, scientific research and energy.

According to statistics from the Cameroonian Ministry of Commerce, trade between Cameroon and Côte d'Ivoire peaked at 33 billion CFA francs in 2012, against 10.7 billion CFA francs in 2011, an increase of nearly 300% in one year.