Informal work in Cameroon: bendskin, buyam-sellam and small trades

What is the informal sector?

For the INS, the informal sector comprises production units that have no taxpayer number and/or keep no formal accounts under the OHADA accounting standard. The definition follows International Labour Organization standards. In 2021, 96.4% of these units had neither a taxpayer number nor accounts. Informal employment is broader: it also includes smallholder farming and undeclared employees.

Informal work accounts for 94.9% of jobs in rural areas, 78.9% in Douala and 75.9% in Yaoundé; it reaches 91.0% among women against 83.4% among men. In the economy as a whole, the INS estimated in 2016, when it rebased the national accounts, that the informal sector made up 42% of GDP, against 37.8% under the old 2005 base (Ecomatin, 2021).

Informal trades

Outside agriculture, 36.4% of informal units are in services, 35.2% in trade and 28.4% in industry (processing, tailoring, construction). Retail is the largest branch (29.0% of units), followed by catering (14.7%), food processing (14.1%) and transport (10.1%). Almost nine units in ten (85.7%) employ just one person, and six in ten work without premises: on the street, at the market or on the move.

• Bendskin (motorbike taxi; the rider is a “bendskineur”): carrying passengers by motorbike. In EESI 3, transport units are 100% run by men, almost all without premises (99.8%), and earn one of the highest incomes in the informal sector: 112,600 CFA a month on average, with a median of 76,300 CFA (2021). In Douala, the city council imposed licences, registration documents and colour-coded vests by district as early as 2017 (Camer.be).
• Buyam-sellam (also spelt bayam-sellam): the women food resellers found in every market in Yaoundé and across the country, according to a study published in an agronomy journal in 2016. They have their own association, the Association des bayam-sellam du Cameroun, which notably runs a fair in Yaoundé (Febasy, 11th edition in December 2024). According to the INS, 63.1% of informal retail units are run by women.
• Street food, tailoring, hairdressing, repairs: 86.4% of catering units and 81.4% of tailoring units are run by women, while informal repair and construction are almost exclusively male (INS, 2021).

Incomes and working conditions

Almost half of informal workers (47.0%) earned less than the then minimum wage (36,270 CFA) in 2021. Three in four (74.3%) learnt their trade on their own or on the job, and they have 6.6 years of schooling on average. Start-up capital comes mainly from personal savings (55.9% of units), gifts or inheritance (16.3%) and tontines (12.9%); bank loans are almost non-existent (0.05%). Detailed incomes by city, sex and status are on the page about salaries.

Social security: CNPS voluntary insurance

Social protection is almost absent from informal work: in 2021, 99.5% of units were not registered with the National Social Insurance Fund (CNPS), only 1.1% had declared at least one employee, and 15.1% of business owners said they had ever heard of social security (INS). For them, the CNPS opened a voluntary insurance scheme, provided for by a decree of 13 August 2014 and launched on 1 December 2014, according to Camer.be. It covers old age, disability and death; the insured person alone pays a contribution of 8.4% of a declared income between the minimum wage and the 750,000 CFA ceiling (CLEISS, 2024).

The scheme grew fast at first: 85,000 members in 2015, 140,000 in 2016 and 152,000 by mid-2017, but according to Camer.be only half of them actually paid their contributions. According to the CNPS as quoted by Camer.be (2019), the voluntary scheme had 134,883 active members in 2018; no more recent figure has been published. In EESI 3, 31.7% of informal business owners said they favoured a contribution scheme, and 64.3% of those who answered did not want to pay more than 2,000 CFA a month.

Tax and formalisation

• Registration: in 2021, 95.7% of informal units had no taxpayer number, 97.4% were not on the trade register and 97.5% had no professional card. The main reason given was that registration “is not compulsory” (42.8%), ahead of not knowing about it (24.5%) and cost (15.9%). Only 12.6% of owners said they were ready to register and 17.4% to pay tax (INS).
• Dealings with the authorities: 9.1% of units had a dispute with the state during the year, mostly over tax; the INS notes that seven in ten settled it through a “gift”, an arrangement or a fine without a receipt, with average gifts of 22,900 CFA and fines of 23,200 CFA.
• Tax: small taxpayers used to pay the impôt libératoire, a flat-rate tax. Since the 2025 finance law, businesses with turnover under 50 million CFA pay the impôt général synthétique (IGS), a flat levy collected for local councils, which replaced the impôt libératoire and the simplified regime; Ecomatin reports that the state transferred 10.35 billion CFA to them under this heading for 2025. Brackets and thresholds are covered on the page on business taxes.
• The entreprenant status: the OHADA Uniform Act on General Commercial Law, adopted on 15 December 2010, created this simplified status for sole traders, who register by simple declaration with the trade and personal property credit register (RCCM). The status is lost if turnover exceeds the ceiling set by the state for two consecutive years (Article 30).
• Starting a business: the business creation one-stop shops (CFCE) issue a taxpayer card, trade register entry and a business licence exempt in the first year within 72 hours; in 2022 the INS cited a cost of 41,500 CFA for a sole proprietorship and 51,500 CFA for a limited company, while the Ministry of Finance lists a 41,500 CFA registration fee in both cases (see the page on starting a business).
• Public support: the Integrated Support Programme for Informal Sector Actors (PIAASI), attached to the Ministry of Employment (MINEFOP), funds income-generating projects through credit. In 2010 it covered 270 of the 300 districts and was trying to recover nearly 4 billion CFA from young borrowers (237online). EESI 3 shows that state support finances only 0.03% of start-up capital.

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