Driven by the impact of COVID-19, 130 commercial enterprises in Cameroon had either adopted digital solutions for the first time or increased their current use of digital solutions in their operations by July 2021.

This is according to data released by the country’s National Institute of Statistics (NIS), which added that 10.3% of the companies surveyed used digital platforms for the first time while 19% increase their usage and 19.9% indicated they were already using digital tools and didn’t increase their usage after the COVID-19 outbreak.

The increase in the use of digital platforms stood at 46.2% for big companies, 36.9% for SMEs and 13.0% for informal production units.

It emerged that three out of ten enterprises surveyed used digital platforms for e-commerce or social media networks to market their services/products. Enterprises within the banking, insurance, IT and telecommunications industries ordered at least 6.6% of their staff to work from home.

The report showed that the ability to leverage digital solutions has been hampered by a lack of financial resources, reluctance to digitise, technical incompetence, amongst others.

Statisticians have urged the government to ease access to digital platforms and social networks in order to make them more available to companies and household consumers.

“The use of digital platforms, social networks for e-commerce, marketing, the development of new products and online payment are initiatives to be encouraged and supported, as most companies are moving towards them,” they stated.

The 454 enterprises sampled from across the country were surveyed between June and July 2021. They were drawn from the electricity, gas and water utility services, as well as industries such as food, chemical, pharmaceutical, telecoms, insurance, banking, education, construction, catering, commerce, amongst others.

Education, telecommunications and financial markets lead in the use of digital tools.