Diamond Capital Convention 2026: What Douala's First Capital-Markets Summit Revealed About Financing Central Africa

Central Africa does not lack capital. It lacks the plumbing that moves capital from savings accounts into companies. That was the thesis of the first Diamond Capital Convention (DCC), held from 23 to 25 September 2026 at the Best Western Plus Soaho Douala Airport, under the patronage of Cameroon's Prime Minister. For three days, the region's market regulator, its stock exchange, its central bank, pension and insurance funds, brokers, asset managers and development-finance institutions sat in the same rooms to ask why the CEMAC capital market still finances so little of the real economy.

This report draws on the convention's official programme, The Capital Book, and on press coverage of the sessions. It sets out who spoke, what was said, and what it means for investors and companies looking at Cameroon and its five CEMAC neighbours.

Why a capital-markets convention, and why now

The convention's organisers framed the problem in one line: "La CEMAC ne manque pas de capital. Elle doit mieux organiser sa rencontre avec les opportunités." CEMAC does not lack capital; it has to organise how capital meets opportunity. In her foreword, Ingrid Obouh-Fegue, managing director of ALCA, wrote that the region lacks neither projects, entrepreneurs, savings nor institutions, but the bridges between those who carry ambitions, those who hold capital, those who structure financing and those who set the market's rules.

« Un marché financier se mesure à sa capacité à transformer l'épargne en investissement et l'investissement en développement. »

“A financial market is measured by its ability to turn savings into investment, and investment into development.” (our translation)

— Ingrid Obouh-Fegue, Managing Director, Almasi Capital & Advisory. Foreword, The Capital Book, September 2026

« Il est question de poser les questions difficiles, confronter les réalités, présenter des projets, créer des connexions et faire émerger des solutions applicables. »

“The aim is to ask the difficult questions, confront realities, present projects, create connections and bring out solutions that can be applied.” (our translation)

— Ingrid Obouh-Fegue. Diamond Capital Convention, Douala, 23 September 2026

The programme listed six reasons the market has to "change scale": depth (more issuers, investors and instruments), companies (whose participation remains limited despite large growth needs), savings (more domestic savings must finance production), international capital (which follows trust, market legibility and project quality), long time horizons (transformation needs instruments that last) and coordination (regulators, market infrastructure, intermediaries, investors and companies acting as one ecosystem).

Day 1: vision, realities and the price of African risk

Finance Minister Louis Paul Motaze, representing the Prime Minister, opened the convention alongside the market regulator COSUMAF, chaired by Jacqueline Adiaba-Nkembe, and the Douala exchange BVMAC, led by Louis Banga Ntolo. The minister called for a deeper, more dynamic and more attractive financial market able to support companies, infrastructure and large transformation projects, and for reforms to steer long-term savings towards infrastructure, industrialisation, energy, transport and agribusiness. He summed up the task in one phrase:

« relier les deux bouts de la chaîne »

“connect the two ends of the chain.” (our translation)

— Louis Paul Motaze, Minister of Finance of Cameroon, representing the Prime Minister. Opening ceremony, Douala, 23 September 2026

ALCA chairman Joseph Eyok gave the opening keynote, Breaking the Cycle: reinventing African finance by 2030. It was followed by the signature keynote of Stanislas Zézé, chief executive of the rating agency Bloomfield Investment Corporation, on rethinking African risk "from perception to reality". Zézé argued that the continent is told it needs about $400 billion a year for its development while it holds some $4,000 billion in savings, ten times that need, and that roughly 80% of Central African economic activity is informal while financial products are designed for the formal 20%. He criticised over-regulation as a brake on market integration and pointed to the Dangote refinery's listing plans as the kind of instrument innovation the region needs.

« Ce sont les choses auxquelles nous devons commencer à penser. Créer des outils et des instruments »

“These are the things we must start thinking about: creating tools and instruments.” (our translation)

— Stanislas Zézé, Chairman and CEO, Bloomfield Investment Corporation. Keynote "Rethinking African risk", 24 September 2026

The afternoon brought a project spotlight from Dr Ahmadou Sardaouna, managing director of the Société Immobilière du Cameroun (SIC), on its structuring real-estate projects, and The Hot Seat, billed as "three uncomfortable truths about CEMAC financial markets", with Noëlle Kouo Ngamby (EDC Asset Management, president of the association of asset-management companies), Ernest Pouhe (ASCA, president of the association of brokerage firms), Cyriaque Nandjo (Nandjo Advisory) and James Kuate (Qantara Asset Management), moderated by financial expert José Dié.

Day 2: capital, debt, technology and company growth

The second day moved from diagnosis to deals. Louis Roger Manga, managing director of MAETUR, the state land-development agency, presented its projects in a 30-minute spotlight. The Investment Match session, moderated by Joseph Eyok, brought together the economy ministry (MINEPAT), Proparco, Citi and Forvis Mazars to set out what makes a project bankable: preparation, structuring and risk-sharing.

Capital on Trial, moderated by Ingrid Obouh-Fegue, asked why capital still flows so reluctantly to Central Africa. On the panel sat the institutional investors that hold much of Cameroon's long-term savings: the national pension fund CNPS (led by Olivier Mekulu Mvondo), the sinking fund CAA (Adolphe Noah Ndongo), La Régionale Bank and the World Bank's IFC. Payments were the subject of the keynote by Guy Noël Londongo, head of the regional interbank switch GIMAC, on how interoperability, digital payments and data are redrawing financial integration in CEMAC.

The day closed with the Diamond NextGen Challenge finals, in which shortlisted young founders pitched to a jury for 10 million FCFA in prizes, and with the DCC Capital Connect business meetings, which ran in parallel from 09:00 to 17:30.

Day 3: regulation, trust and integration

The final day belonged to the market's architects. BEAC Governor Yvon Sana Bangui was programmed to deliver the keynote From fragmentation to integration, on integrated capital markets financing the CEMAC economy. The Market Makers panel, moderated by former BEAC executive Aboubakar Salao, gathered BVMAC, Cameroon's Treasury and the central bank's regional credit committee (CRCT) on depth, liquidity, infrastructure and savings mobilisation. The closing ceremony, led by ALCA and the finance ministry, was to adopt a Douala Declaration of commitments and recommendations.

What was said on the floor

Three themes recurred in the coverage.

• Savings are trapped in the wrong products. Financial professional Marthe Epanya Oho told the convention that resources remain concentrated in traditional savings products and term deposits, while companies need equity and long-term debt.
• Financial culture is the bottleneck. Ingrid Obouh-Fegue argued that the challenge goes beyond launching new products to building an ecosystem of investors, companies and public authorities; Keving Mbateng, CEO of KTL Groups, called for stronger public financial education to widen the investor base.
• Rules must keep pace. Observers noted the convention's focus on the regional market regulation, Règlement n°01/22/CEMAC/UMAC/CM/COSUMAF, on sukuk and on fintech supervision, and on how far CEMAC trails the West African exchange, the BRVM, in mobilising long-term savings.

The nine questions the convention set itself

The organisers published nine questions, which read as a reform agenda for the region: how to relearn to read African risk; why CEMAC savings still under-finance its companies; how to turn more SMEs and family firms into issuers; how to build a real yield curve from short to long term; what must change for more projects to become bankable; how to mobilise institutional investors for the real economy without compromising security and returns; what role technology can play in opening investment to more people; how to build the trust a deeper, more liquid market needs; and how to grow the next generation of entrepreneurs and capital-market professionals. As the programme puts it: "These are not conference topics. They are development questions."

What it means for investors and companies

For companies, the convention's message was practical. Access to the market takes more than a financing need: reliable financial statements, a clear strategy, stronger governance, the right instrument and preparation for investor dialogue. Firms that start that work now will be first in line as the market deepens.

For investors, the signals to watch are the ones the Day 3 institutions control: the pace of new listings and bond issues on BVMAC, the construction of a sovereign yield curve by CEMAC treasuries, the rules COSUMAF sets for new instruments such as sukuk, and whether pension and insurance funds like CNPS and CAA shift part of their deposits into listed paper. The presence of Proparco, IFC and the African Guarantee Fund also suggests that guarantees and blended finance will be used to de-risk the first transactions.

For Douala, the ambition is explicit: to become the region's financial hub, with the DCC as its recurring meeting point. Whether the Douala Declaration produces verifiable decisions, as the organisers promise, is the test the second edition will face.

Conclusion

The first Diamond Capital Convention did not claim to solve CEMAC's financing gap in three days. What it did was put the people who control the market's rules, liquidity and savings in front of the companies that need them, and name the obstacles in public: savings parked in deposits, an informal economy the market does not reach, rules that lag innovation and a trust deficit that keeps long-term capital away. If Central Africa's savings, measured in the thousands of billions of dollars continent-wide, are to finance its ports, power plants and factories, the plumbing debated in Douala this September is where it will have to start.

Sources: The Capital Book, official programme of the Diamond Capital Convention 2026 (Almasi Capital & Advisory); diamondcapitalconvention.com; Camer.be; allAfrica; Journal du Cameroun; News du Cameroun; Ça Presse; 237online; Droit Médias Finance. Speakers and sessions are as listed in the official programme; quotations from the sessions are as reported by the outlets cited.

English · Français · Deutsch · Türkçe · Русский · 中文 · العربية