On July 12, 2026, during the "Club d’Élites" program broadcast on Vision 4, Professor Viviane Ondoua Biwolé, a recognized expert in public governance, sounded the alarm on the management of Cameroonian state‑owned enterprises, pinpointing the recent appointment at the head of Sonatrel.
In her analysis, she points to the mismatch between the profiles of appointed leaders and the technical requirements of strategic structures such as the national electricity transmission network. According to her, placing a civil servant whose career has been exclusively in prefectural administration cannot guarantee the profitability of such an entity.
"You cannot go from prefect to CEO of Sonatrel and expect the company to become profitable. It's not possible. We're not prepared. Someone who has spent his entire career in prefectural duties cannot be asked to fill this role. It even puts him in difficulty. If it takes seven years to train a doctor, I don't understand why you think managing a company is spontaneous, intuitive. It's not intuitive," Professor Biwolé said, recalling the gap between medical training and assuming the duties of a chief executive officer.
For her, managing a national electricity grid requires advanced skills in energy engineering, industrial planning, and corporate finance. The role of a prefect, by contrast, focuses on territorial command and maintaining public order—missions that do not prepare one for leading a complex industrial company. This technical mismatch, the expert says, is the first of three major problems she identified.
The impact of this leadership choice directly affects users. A management lacking the necessary technical mastery risks lengthening maintenance delays, increasing energy losses, and compromising grid stability. In a country where access to electricity remains a crucial issue for economic and social development, every malfunction translates into outages that affect households, businesses, and public services.
Beyond the Sonatrel case, Professor Biwolé notes that the practice of parachuting civil administrators into the heads of strategic entities reflects a nomination culture that favors political loyalty over technical competence. She warns that if this practice continues, it could erode investor confidence and hinder the reforms needed to modernize Cameroon's public sector.
As debates over the reform of state‑owned enterprise governance intensify, Viviane Ondoua Biwolé's voice reminds that the performance of vital infrastructure like Sonatrel depends primarily on appropriate expertise. The country now awaits concrete answers so that future appointments are based on rigorous technical criteria, thereby ensuring the sustainability of essential services for Cameroonians.
