Cameroonian cosmetics mogul Francis Nana Djomou is losing ground as imports surge 66%

Francis Nana Djomou built Biopharma, Cameroon's largest cosmetics manufacturer, on a single proposition that Cameroonians would buy locally made products if somebody priced them for the middle class. Import figures published this week suggest that argument is losing.

Cameroon bought 55.8 billion CFA francs of perfumes and beauty products from abroad in 2025, about $99.1 million at 562.9 francs to the dollar, according to the country's customs directorate. That is up 27.9% on the 43.6 billion francs recorded in 2024, and 66.2% higher than the 33.5 billion francs spent in 2023. The three-year increase comes to 22.2 billion francs, roughly $39.4 million.

Volume rose too, from 12,724 tonnes to 16,036 tonnes, a gain of 26%.

The category now accounts for 1.1% of Cameroon's total import bill of 5,240.1 billion francs, putting perfumes and cosmetics on a par with glass and glassware at 56.9 billion and milling products at 59 billion. Pharmaceuticals remain far larger at 176.4 billion.

The acceleration is what stands out. Imports grew by roughly 5 billion francs a year a decade ago. They now advance in steps of about 10 billion.

Djomou's company exists because of the gap those imports once left open.

He was born in Bangou, a village in Cameroon's Bamiléké west, the son of a gendarme, and raised by a merchant uncle who made him the family treasurer at ten. He studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, taking a master's in management and business administration and a postgraduate diploma in exchange communication, and returned to Cameroon in 1993 into an economy in deep recession.

Unable to find a job, he started a computer distribution and maintenance business. It worked, but staff kept leaving, and he moved into representing foreign cosmetics brands including Pierre Fabre, where he had worked, along with Vegebom and Continental. Those products sold only to the wealthy.

He founded Laboratoires Biopharma in 2001 to sell to everyone else, pricing products between 1,000 and 2,500 francs, roughly $1.80 to $4.40, and backing them with heavy advertising.

Biopharma now carries around 30 brands and more than 80 product lines, sells in 22 African countries, and makes about 60% of its revenue from exports, growing at roughly 20% a year. The wider group represents investment of more than 30 billion francs, about $53 million, and employs close to 500 people. Michel Nkenfack, who runs the Cameroonian laboratory Lincloe and chairs the national association of local product promoters, has credited Djomou with persuading domestic manufacturers that they could compete with multinationals at all.

What the customs data describes is the reversal of that argument.

Cameroonian importers cited high production costs in 2021, driven partly by the absence of locally made packaging, alongside smuggling, counterfeiting and weak brand labelling. The consequence, as EcoMatin reports it, is a perception problem that domestic manufacturers have not solved. A student in Yaoundé told the publication she would rather buy French or Chinese brands even at twice the price. A perfumery manager at the Etoudi market said his customers ask only for imported products from France or Dubai, and that he stocks accordingly because it sells.

Cameroon is now the third-largest market for cosmetics and hygiene products in francophone sub-Saharan Africa, behind the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ivory Coast, according to Team France Export.

Djomou has been building elsewhere. He runs the holding company Tagidor Premium Investment, which sits above Biopharma, the soft drinks maker Elim Beverages, the seasoning business AGFI, the wine company Foodis and Tagidor Garden. He invested more than 2 billion francs from 2016 in the Tagidor Garden Resort and Spa, a 20-hectare development in his home village of Bangou with about 80 luxury bungalows, artificial lakes and a botanical garden, originally intended to house a team competing at the Africa Cup of Nations.

Last week he announced a move into industrial poultry farming covering the full chain from breeding to food processing.

He is unusual among senior Cameroonian businessmen in holding no membership of the governing Cameroon People's Democratic Movement, and he opposed the economic partnership agreement with the European Union that opened African markets, arguing that Cameroon and other African states could build genuine industrial capacity of their own.

The import numbers are the case against him.