Between April and early September 2026, Cameroon’s Directorate General of Customs collected 1.8 billion FCFA (around 2.7 million euros) in duties and taxes on imported phones, tablets and digital terminals under a new collection mechanism. Before the reform took effect, customs clearance of phones brought barely 100 million francs per month into state coffers. The system is causing friction among some importers, while customs officials insist they are pursuing fiscal, security and economic goals.
With our correspondent in Yaoundé,
Kennedy Avenue in Yaoundé is bustling. It is the main retail point for imported mobile phones in Cameroon. Seydou, a second-hand phone importer, says he has run into problems with the new declaration and customs clearance mechanism: “We import used phones that sell here for between 20,000 and 25,000 CFA francs. They are cleared at the airport, but customs officers don’t record their serial numbers. When we sell them to customers, they come back saying they keep getting messages that their phones will be blocked.”
Since 1 April, phone prices have risen, according to this reseller. “Customers are not interested in buying undeclared phones, but they can’t afford the price of cleared phones either. So it’s causing us a lot of harm,” says Gérard Fontem. He now sells his phones at higher prices; for some, prices have nearly doubled, from 45,000 to 85,000 CFA francs.
“Those who think the phone price has gone up are those who weren’t paying”
From 68 euros to around 129 euros, according to Paul Olivier Libii, principal customs inspector and focal point for the reform at the Directorate General of Customs in Yaoundé, importers are far from being suffocated: “Those who think the phone price has increased are those who weren’t paying [their taxes], because for those who were paying on the basis of transactional value at 66%, the phone price will actually decrease. But those who weren’t paying used customs duty as an adjustment variable to undermine those who were paying. The new mechanism will bring everyone to the same level.”
This new mechanism is not a new tax, but rather a new collection system based on digitalisation, Libii argues: “The transactional value has been divided by four, even seven. We have eight collection categories ranging from 5,000 to 400,000 CFA francs. Then the overall rate dropped from 67% to 33.33%, so these are facilitation methods.” About five million phones were still escaping the system, phones that will be recovered, customs services promise.
