Cameroonian banking billionaire Paul Fokam launches Africa Diamond Invest securities firm in Togo

Cameroonian billionaire Paul Kammogne Fokam's Afriland First Holding has launched Africa Diamond Invest, a new securities and investment management firm capitalised at 1 billion FCFA ($1.6 million), deepening the group's push into West Africa's financial markets from its Togo base.

Africa Diamond Invest, registered as a Société de Gestion et d'Intermédiation, will operate as a licensed securities firm in Togo's financial market. The launch marks the most concrete step yet in Afriland First Holding's ambition to build a regional investment platform from Lomé, which Fokam has described as one of West Africa's most business-friendly environments and a natural hub for extending his group's financial services footprint across the UEMOA zone.

Afriland First Holding, the investment subsidiary of Fokam's Geneva-headquartered Afriland First Group, was registered in Togo in September 2022 with an initial capital of 100 million FCFA. The company is headed by Christian Fogaing Kammogne, Fokam's son, who served as deputy managing director of Afriland First Bank Côte d'Ivoire for six years before taking the role. The launch of Africa Diamond Invest with a significantly larger capital base of 1 billion FCFA ($1.6 million) represents a substantial escalation of that initial commitment and the first operational product to emerge from the holding company's Lomé base.

Fokam chose Togo for the holding company's headquarters citing the government's vision to position the country as a regional investment hub. The country has positioned itself aggressively as a financial and logistics hub within the WAEMU economic bloc, and Lomé's Bourse Régionale des Valeurs Mobilières membership and improving business climate indicators have attracted several regional financial groups in recent years. The Togolese government under President Faure Gnassingbé has consistently promoted the country as a gateway to both francophone West Africa and, increasingly, anglophone markets further east.

Fokam, who founded what is now Afriland First Bank in Cameroon in 1987 under the name Caisse Commune d'Epargne et d'Investissement, has built one of the most geographically diversified African-owned financial groups on the continent. Afriland First Group operates across Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Benin, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, São Tomé and Príncipe, South Sudan, Liberia, Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, France and China, with the Geneva headquarters serving as the international holding structure. He has described his philosophy as building African-owned financial institutions capable of serving populations excluded from formal banking, a mission that has guided the group's consistent push into frontier and underserved markets.

The launch of Africa Diamond Invest extends that philosophy into West Africa's capital markets, which have seen rising retail investor participation, improved regulatory frameworks under the BVRM and expanding demand for structured investment products as a growing middle class seeks alternatives to traditional bank deposits. Afriland First Holding's positioning as a securities firm in Togo gives it a platform to intermediate between regional investors and the BVRM's listed companies, manage portfolios and potentially access the broader UEMOA financial market through Lomé's established financial infrastructure.