ASAFE (Association pour le Soutien et L'Appui a La Femme Entrepreneur) - Cameroon

Most of ASAFE's members are women entrepreneurs who lead companies that employ less than ten employees and that focus on agricultural products, textiles, art, and commerce. Because their activities extend out of Cameroon, many of these women travel internationally to search for needed goods and equipment. Some also carry out commercial activities in Chad, Gabon, Nigeria, and Central African Republic.

ASAFE proceeds from the assumption that electronic commerce will reduce the cost of these transactions, facilitate access to information, and increase the visibility of the enterprises owned and controlled by women. Moreover, ASAFE seeks to utilise the flexibility afforded by the Internet to train women in the techniques and knowledge necessary for the growth of these businesses. To this end, the programme's central activities include:

• Microfinancing:
• The Woman-Credit-Loan (FCE) (Femme Credit Epargne), which aims both to promote the development of economic activities organised by women and to establish a savings-and-loan system whereby ownership ultimately falls to women who are denied formal bank loans. Training workshops bring together trainers from FCE, leaders of women's groups, and associations of co-workers. It is hoped that, from this initial step, entrepreneurs will be able to raise personal capital contributions in order to obtain traditional bank loans.
• The ALAJI Programme, which allows members to, on a daily basis, save a fixed amount of money. The money saved is then returned to the women at the end of the month.
• New information and communication technologies:
  
  • Cyber Forum of Women Entrepreneurs from Africa and the Diaspora, held in November, 1999 in Douala (Cameroon), which included an introduction to electronic commerce and its application to textiles, agroindustry, and art, as well as a training workshop on the Internet.
  • A cyber boutique with six to seven computers for public access, training rooms that include computer training facilities, and an area dedicated to agroprocessing enterprises.
• Counselling and the provision of information to members
• Training workshops that have included a workshop to train leaders of women's associations in the methodologies of creating and managing small enterprises (in Limbe, Kumba, Ebolowa, 1995); training of women and youths in bee keeping (1995); training in institutional and organisational reinforcement (Douala, 1995); and a joint workshop between ASAFE and the UNDP on Population and Development in Douala (1996).
• Research and consultations that aim to foster the valorisation of traditional practices to improve basic training and to orient women and women's enterprises toward other new, lucrative opportunities.

Women, Technology, Economic Development, Environment.

Women constitute more than 50% of Cameroon's population. Though many of these women have shown an inclination towards the development of a business spirit (honesty, dynamism, and rigour in management), unemployment generated by economic crisis hits them harder than it hits men. They face stiff competition from those laid off from public service as well as from public and private companies. This is true even in female-dominated sectors, such as food crop production and the informal sector. In short, women are hindered in their economic development by factors including increasing population density, competition for resources, the burden that women bear in meeting the basic needs of the household, decline in incomes, financial constraints, and poor infrastructure. As a result, the business activities of women in Cameroon tend to centre on subsistence and precarious revenue.