SADJOUA Joseph, DBA

Certified tax specialist for companies and groups, graduated from Paris-Dauphine University and Francis Lefebvre Formation in France, Mr. Sadjoua Mveng Joseph Lottin is a civil servant on the rank of Senior Inspector of Telecommunications Off-Scale on secondment at CAMTEL since 1999.

He defended in March 2025 his thesis of Executive Doctorate of Business Administration (EDBA), on the theme “The management of competitiveness in State-owned enterprises in Cameroon : the case of Cameroon Telecommunications (CAMTEL)”, under the direction of Professor Julien Husson, Director of the IAE Metz School of Management, University of Lorraine in France

Prof Husson Julien

The management of competitiveness in public enterprises in Cameroon: The case of Cameroon Telecommunications (Camtel)

Under the policy of restoring market mechanisms, which Cameroon has implemented since the late 1990s, certain public enterprises whose privatization process has not been successful find themselves in competition with private enterprises to which operating concessions have been granted on the same markets. This long-term phenomenon has not yet been studied in practice, to the point where it is not easy to say without cartoons how these public enterprises manage their competitiveness in the face of such competition. At a time when the state is increasingly requiring public managers to ensure the competitiveness of the public enterprises for which they are responsible, it is appropriate at the theoretical and managerial level to question the management of the competitiveness of these public enterprises, to understand the approaches and management tools that are implemented; and to contribute, if necessary, to improve their practices. The objective of this thesis is to build a prototype model for managing the competitiveness of public enterprises in Cameroon; on the basis of their experience during the period 1999-2019 on the one hand and the theoretical knowledge available in this field on the other. It is a retrospective longitudinal analysis in depth, conducted according to a pragmatic constructivist epistemology in logic of abduction in the sense of Charles Sanders Peirce. A hybrid exploratory qualitative research of a single case study applied to CAMTEL, Cameroon’s incumbent public telecommunications operator. Data is collected by empirical triangulation of documentary sources, semi-directional interviews, and an autoethnographic journal. A diagnosis of the level of competitiveness of this public undertaking is made at the end of each of the two decades of the study period. The results obtained reveal practices for steering competitiveness with much specificity through two major levers: the “Competitiveness potential of the public enterprise” composed of dynamic capacities and intangible capital; the “Competitiveness performance of a public enterprise”, which combines commercial performance, financial performance and public policy or mission of general interest performance.