5,971 Civil Servants Abroad: Cameroon Audits Its State Payroll

By Damian Maabo, with field reporting by Clarice Arrey Tarkang, Elvis Kana and Hugues Djon.

Cameroon has identified 5,971 civil servants it considers non-resident, and it has given them until 31 October 2026 to prove their absence from their post is authorised. Together they cost the state about 22 billion FCFA a year in wages. Those who cannot justify their stay abroad will be treated as having abandoned their posts, and their pay will be suspended.

How the list was built

The audit did not start with a list of suspects. It started with movement. The administration collected and processed information about people crossing the country's borders, then matched it against the payroll. The result was 5,971 civil servants whose presence in Cameroon could not be established.

The government presents the exercise as part of its resolve to restructure public finances, and the stated aim is explicit: managing the state's payroll properly, eliminating undue wages, fighting fraud, securing public spending and fighting so-called ghost workers.

What the civil servants have to do

Absence is not forbidden. The state's point is that it must know why someone is absent and be able to confirm that pay corresponds to actual work, even work done abroad. For civil servants living outside the country, valid authorisation is needed to justify being away from the post for any period, whether for professional or personal reasons.

Those concerned must report to the Paymaster General's services in Yaoundé One, where their September and October wages have been transferred. They must bring a photocopy of their passport, a document proving effective presence at work, and the reason for the journey abroad.

Why 22 billion FCFA matters

Twenty-two billion FCFA is not a large share of a national budget, but it is the kind of leak that is simple to explain and easy to defend closing. It also sits beside bigger structural questions about how Cameroon manages public money, which we examined in our article on where Cameroon's public money leaks and in our analysis of Cameroon's debt trap.

The audit also fits with the wider cash management reform covered in the treasury single account reform: both aim at traceability, knowing who is paid, how much and where the money sits.

Not the first clean-up

This is the latest round in a long effort. The physical count of state personnel known as COPPE, carried out in 2018, led the government to remove more than 10,000 fictitious staff from the payroll and save about 30 billion FCFA a year, Business in Cameroon reported. Since 2024, the public service ministry has also been rolling out AIGLES, a fingerprint-based personnel and payroll system meant to replace the SIGIPES platform created some 30 years ago, according to Biometric Update.

Those figures give the current audit some scale. The 22 billion FCFA at stake is close to three-quarters of the yearly saving attributed to COPPE, from a list less than 60% as long. By our calculation it works out at about 3.7 million FCFA per person a year, or roughly 307,000 FCFA a month. That average says nothing about any individual case, and being on the list is not proof of wrongdoing: some absences will turn out to be authorised.

What to watch next

After 31 October, the number to watch is how many of the 5,971 submit documents the authorities accept. Officials say the documents will serve as evidence leading to a positive or negative outcome. A large share validated would point to a data-matching problem. A large share suspended would confirm the extent of the issue.

Sources and further reading: Ministry of Finance (MINFI), Business in Cameroon on COPPE, Biometric Update on AIGLES. Field reporting: Clarice Arrey Tarkang, Elvis Kana and Hugues Djon. Context comes from Business in Cameroon and Biometric Update; the per-person calculations are ours. Updated 7 November 2026.

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