Cameroonian Entrepreneur Pitches Rural Job-Creation System, Takes Third Place at UNECA Summit

• At a jobs contest during a big Africa summit, Cameroonian Christian Ntieche pitched a plan that bundles training, mentoring, money and market links

• His twist: turn the savings circles villagers already use into a credit record banks will accept — no bank account needed to begin

• He was one of nine finalists, and they all said the same thing: Africa has plenty of good ideas. What’s missing is the support to make them work

In Addis Ababa this week, a Cameroonian entrepreneur named Christian Ntieche made his case for a new way to create jobs for young Africans. He had just five minutes, and a panel of six judges from major global organizations was listening. He was awarded the third place.

Ntieche runs IT KOLA, a company in Yaoundé, Cameroon, that helps people start and grow small businesses. He was pitching at a contest called the “Hack the Job Challenge,” part of the first-ever Africa Development Impact Forum. He was up against eight other finalists from Rwanda, Ethiopia, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Kenya, South Africa, Togo and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

His idea is called SIIRCE. The name is a mouthful — it stands for Integrated Rural Incubation and Job Creation System — but the thinking behind it is simple. “Africa does not need more training programs,” Ntieche told the judges. “It needs systems that turn potential into real businesses, real jobs and real income.” He speaks from experience: over the past 11 years, his team has worked with more than 450 small business owners in rural Cameroon.

That point matched what the whole forum was about. The event was organized by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, known as the ECA, and its goal was to move from talk to action. The reason is stark. Africa needs to create more than 15 million jobs every year just to keep up with all the young people entering the workforce. More than 60% of Africans are under 25.

The gap to monitor and adress

So, what does Ntieche’s plan actually do? It works on four fronts at once: it teaches business skills, helps people set up and run their ventures, connects them to money and customers, and tracks their progress through an app.

The most original part deals with money. In many African villages, people save together in informal groups, often called tontines — a kind of rotating savings club. Banks usually don’t count this as proof you can handle a loan. Ntieche’s tool, TEVE Finance Mixte, digitizes those savings circles so they become a credit record that lenders will trust. The key selling point: you don’t need a bank account to start.

That matters because banks are out of reach for most rural Cameroonians. Fewer than 15% of them have access to a formal bank, according to figures Ntieche cited quoting CEMAC  banking authorities. His project would start in one area — the Noun department in western Cameroon, home to 1.54 million people. It’s a region full of farming and food activity, but where too many small businesses fail.

For now, the numbers are goals, not results. The six-month trial aims to train 300 people — at least 60% of them women — help 250 businesses get going, and create or protect more than 300 jobs. If it expands across the wider central African region over three years, Ntieche believes it could support 5,000 direct jobs and 15,000 more along the way. The catch he openly admits: he still needs the money to launch.

One Message

The other finalists pitched similar dreams in different shapes. One offered an Africa-wide website connecting young job-seekers, small companies and investors. Another trained young people and women to build small solar power systems for villages with no electricity. A third took on the cruel trap where graduates can’t get a job without experience, and can’t get experience without a job — a problem that leaves 60% of Ghana’s 300,000 yearly graduates unemployed. A fourth focused on rebuilding local industry in Congo.

The judges came from six well-known institutions: the ECA, the UN Development Programme, the International Labour Organization, UNESCO, a consulting firm called PEMANDU Associates, and UN Women. By the end, one message tied all nine pitches together: Africa isn’t short on solutions. What’s holding it back is everything around them — the funding, the rules, and the doors to markets that stay shut.

The head of the ECA, Clever Gatete, summed up the stakes at the opening: “Africa possesses one of the world’s greatest strategic assets: its people.” The forum was built to keep tabs on promises even after it wraps up on Friday. For Ntieche and the others, the hard part starts now — turning a five-minute pitch into real, lasting funding.

Idriss Linge