Resilience of Entrepreneurs in Crisis Context: A study applied in the Anglophone crisis in the North West Region of Cameroon

Abstract

Entrepreneurs in Cameroon represent an enormous economic weight known as the backbone of the economy, but forced to adapt to the situation to remain in the market as they are faced with the armed conflicts commonly known as Anglophone crisis. This research aims at identifying the different ways in which entrepreneurs in crisis context can become resilient. We opted for a qualitative research approach with an inductive reasoning. The population of study is made up of entrepreneurs within this area of crisis and the sampled population is the entrepreneurs who have been resilient in the crisis context for the past five years. Our participants were five entrepreneurs due to saturation, addressed with an interview guide for data collection; face-to-face assisted by an audio recorder. Data was analyzed manually as we settled for the thematic analysis. The results revealed that; online sales (100%), rescaling of business (100%), capacity to anticipate (80%), educative seminar (80%) and adaptation capacity (80%) are the key strategies used by entrepreneurs in this crisis area to remain in business. This paper is limited only to the entrepreneurs who have succeeded to remain in business despite the constant unstable environment. To this effect, the entrepreneurs should rescale their businesses and marketing strategies in order not to attract those fighting them and special considerations should be given to the existing entrepreneurs in crisis context with free interest loans for them to remain in business.

Keywords: resilience, entrepreneur, crises.

JEL Classification : (H12, L81) 

Paper type: Empirical research