The opening of a childrens’ library within the National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNPS) of Cameroon aims to improve the working and living conditions of staff by creating a safe space, conducive to reading and learning, for their children. The institution sees it as part of its social responsibility. This space serves a twofold purpose: welcoming staff members’ children while their parents are still working and offering them a range of school and other books to read and consult as well as a place for schoolwork.

Motivated by a desire to participate in the cultural education of children, the National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNPS) of Cameroon has launched reading and discussion sessions of African tales for children of staff and those who live in the neighbourhood.

The legislation governing social security and its litigation is specific in nature, insofar as this field is governed by procedures that are very different from the ones applied in ordinary law. The situation was further complicated by the fact that the courts responsible for handling social security litigation in Cameroon lacked the necessary specialized knowledge, leading several courts to render decisions that were inconsistent with the letter and spirit of the legislation governing social security.

In 2022, the National Social Security Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNPS) entered into a three-year partnership with Cameroon’s Ministry of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries (Ministère de l’Élevage, des Pêches et des Industries animales – MINEPIA) to extend social security coverage to workers in the informal economy of the livestock and fish farming, aquaculture, animal and fisheries industries sub-sector.

Physical identification is necessary to ensure the maintenance of entitlements for recipients of social benefits who receive them via financial institutions or mobile phone operators. However, such identification has limitations because it only takes place once a year.

However, recipients may pass away after identification. Given the unreliability of the civil registration system, the agency has no means of halting payment of benefits for the rest of the year. If left unchecked, this kind of situation can lead to financial losses for the organization.

With a view to bolstering the mechanisms used to collect social security contributions while effectively combating evasion and fraud, platforms were set up for the exchange of data between Cameroon’s National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNPS) and a number of other administrations.

Stakeholders with whom these platforms were established include:

For some ten years, the National Social Security Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance – CNPS) of Cameroon has been resolutely committed to sustainable development and corporate social responsibility (CSR).

By leveraging its wide scope of action (employers, workers, recipients of benefits, health and social campaigns through hospitals and schools, etc.), the CNPS has stepped up its environmental commitment over the last three years through the implementation of an action plan that has significantly reduced its carbon footprint and hence its greenhouse gas emissions.

The Certificate for Submission (Attestation pour soumission – APS) is the clearance certificate issued by the National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNPS) to any employer applying for a public contract. The process of issuing it used to require the employer to travel to the CNPS for both the filing of the application and collection of the document.

Online payment of social security contributions is now supported by electronic reporting on the site www.cnps.cm. It responds to a need for consistency, efficiency, legibility of accounts and adaptation to meet the requirements of a clientele that is open to the world and attentive to technical progress in terms of facilitating transactions and instantaneous response times.

To enable the organization to function properly, the management sets up service contracts with approved suppliers. This relationship is binding on each of the parties, and the National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNPS) is obliged to respect the payment deadline. It is clear that recurrent non-compliance eventually undermines supplier confidence, creating distortions in the economic cycle. Our adherence to these payment times has not always met expectations due to inconsistency and extensibility (up to 90 days).

The payment of social security contributions by the employer is recorded in the form of a payment receipt by the National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNPS). If payment was made by bank transfer, the employer used to have to go to the CNPS’s receipt issuers at a later date to collect his receipt.

Mindful of sports development issues in Cameroon, the National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNPS) is eager to offer staff and other Cameroonians an opportunity to obtain sports coaching for their children. At the same time, it wants to help develop athletics into a high-quality sport. Accordingly, the CNPS has founded a club that serves as a breeding-ground for national athletics.

The dematerialization of all types of payments is a continuous process that has been consolidated as services have been automated, and has seen a shift from cash, checks, and then e-wallet to online and mobile money payment. Payments to customers (pensions, invoices from service providers, staff travel expenses, family allowances, etc.) have been entirely dematerialized since 2018. As far as social security contributions are concerned, online and mobile money payments are the methods preferred by insured persons and employers.

Social security schemes are exposed to the risk of beneficiary substitution and the under-reporting of employee numbers and declared salaries. The pension is a long-term benefit, and this increases the risk of substitution when the physical inspection is only visual. To address this shortcoming, we chose biometric fingerprint identification because it is failsafe. This technical solution has been grafted onto the automated information system and is intended to generate savings in technical expenditure by eradicating beneficiary substitution fraud.

In a situation marked by discourteous behaviour, extortion attempts against insured persons by rogue agents and unusually long processing times for some case files, the National Social Security Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNPS) of Cameroon has adopted the practice of publishing and posting the phone numbers and e-mail addresses of managers to make it easier for users/clients to lodge complaints against case handlers.

As a rule, social security contribution debts are settled by employers in cash. However, an employer may have cash flow issues yet still have assets it could provide to settle or reduce its debt. This alternative method of paying social security contributions, which is non-monetary, has been adopted and put into practice, but only under certain conditions. These include the recovery of social security contribution debts by payment in kind.

Oversight of the activities of the National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNPS) used to be based essentially on the work of the Internal Audit and Oversight Directorate (Direction de l’Audit et du Contrôle interne – DACI), and was carried out almost exclusively through systematic field visits. However, in order to optimize oversight and reduce the organization's costs, the Directorate-General has opted for the implementation of remote oversight by the DACI.

The personality of an organization is reflected in the way it treats its members. It is also influenced by customers’ perception of its internal cohesion (or team spirit). Every organization is a social microcosm and as such, it must be imbued with certain socio-cultural, background characteristics in the promotion of its image. The visual aspect of clothing seems to be one of the most striking aspects of associative culture in the African tradition.

In March 2016, as part of the application of good governance rules, the National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNPS) instituted the inclusion of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Health, Quality, Safety, Environment (HQSE) standards in the procurement process.

Acts of corruption were perceived in various ways by individuals. It was difficult to make it clear to staff that a particular act constituted corruption and as such was forbidden by law. Corruption was perceived by many solely as taking money from a user for a service that was due to him or her by law. Acts of corruption were not recorded in any form with a view to controlling it, regardless of their impact on results or on the organization's resources or public image.

Internal staff training courses organized by the National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNPS) were centralized in Yaoundé, with some deployment at the level of the four regional headquarters. This compelled staff from external services to travel long distances and stay away from their duty stations and homes for several days or even weeks to attend these training courses. This model generated enormous costs for the organization in terms of travel, accommodation and subsistence.

Employers are required to register as enterprises and to register their staff, then pay the corresponding social security contributions. When the employer does not do this, the employees may do it themselves. What has been found in practice is that many employers either do not register themselves or their staff, as a result of which the latter cannot access the social security benefits provided by the National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNPS).

A voluntary insurance scheme for independent workers and workers from the informal sector was established in 2014, in line with regulations. In an effort to make this scheme known to all concerned sectors of the population and to facilitate the enrolment of the greatest possible number, the National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNPS) developed a system involving the accreditation of social secretariats.

Risk mapping is an internal audit tool that allows users to take the necessary measures and establish arrangements to protect the organisation against potentially harmful risks. Based on the observation that not all the risks inherent to the organisation’s activities had been identified, this tool was deployed with a view to managing them, as regards their potential impact on achieving results and the organisation’s assets and image.

The National Social Insurance Fund of Cameroon (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale (CNPS)) has developed an online client account consultation tool with a constant view to modernizing its operations and providing its insurees and their employers with real-time information on their status in its records.

Using their membership number clients can create a login and access their personal or company data directly on the www.cnps.cm site. This allows clients to confirm the accuracy of their data and information and request any necessary updates.

It is a given that any activity in an organisation is exposed to certain risks that may negatively impact day-to-say operations, results being achieved, value being created or even seriously damage the organisation’s image. Since fraud is one of the main risks identified, the consequences of which can be extremely detrimental, it has been the subject of an in-depth study resulting in preventive and warning measures grouped under an anti-fraud system.

Investment through public/private partnerships is a method of funding where a public authority relies on private providers to finance, build/install or even manage equipment or infrastructure. The National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale (CNPS)) of Cameroon, with its policy of prudent management of financial resources and of limiting management risks, opted for this type of funding because, while contributing practically no money at all, the CNPS of Cameroon will, over time acquire assets under certain predetermined conditions.

Faced with an inflow of applications from users, the Directorate-General noted serious deficiencies in in its reception process, which sometimes led to a build-up of claimants at the counters while certain benefits remained unpaid, with no explanation.

The National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale (CNPS)) of Cameroon is an important tool of the State for the promotion of social policy and has therefore decided make social, environmental and economic issues an integral part of its activities and relations with its partners, with the double aim of participating in the sustainable development of the country and reducing the Fund's administrative costs.

The three thousand staff who use the National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNPS) IT system (business, office and infrastructure applications) had to resort to telephoning headquarters IT staff or emailing them whenever they experienced a technical difficulty. They were forced to wait until someone was available to take the call and, if possible, explain at length what to do to resolve the problem remotely. This meant that the process of handling requests, follow-up, and the recording of reliable statistics was unreliable.

The National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale (CNPS)) of Cameroon has put in place a five-year strategic plan for a structural change from resource-based management to results-based management in order to position itself as a modern and sustainable institution capable of providing immediate and quality care for socially insured persons,.

To do so, it has adopted seven strategic guidelines divided into 19 points:

Pensions are paid in cash quarterly at several payment sites across the country. This requires the involvement of extensive human  (including employees of the National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale (CNPS)), police, and financial institutions) and financial resources (including food for the pensioners, logistics, and security).

A series of reforms has been implemented since 2008 to bring the National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale (CNPS)) of Cameroon up to international standards in an effort to incorporate the best management practices of social security organizations, with a view to guaranteeing not only the sustainability of the Fund, but also rigorous, efficient and exemplary management in all respects. To ensure this and guarantee a high level of performance over the long-term, it has been necessary to train the organization's managers in the professions

The National Social Insurance Fund of Cameroon (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale (CNPS)) users were experiencing lengthy waiting times as their files were reviewed by several departments (reception, benefits and accounting) and each step of the review involved separate processing and validation. The CNPS responded to this by developing and implementing a global unified process referred to as the "Total Office" ("Le Bureau Total").

This "anywhere, anytime" access allows them to take action, report their activities and follow the instructions and recommendations issued by the Director-General at the institution's steering committee meetings known as the "Monday Conferences" on a personalized checklist. Checklist entries are recorded.

It is a management tool based on five activity indicators (including one quantitative indicator - production, which covers the objectives assigned each year to administrative units and staff), and four qualitative indicators (quality of work, pro-active behaviour, diligence and a model that allows a qualitative assessment of performance on each objective); weighting coefficients are associated with each objective to determine their relative importance, with the whole combining to give an index of performance on a 100-point scale).

In a context where the process of obtaining a certificate of civil status or school attendance has become commonplace, despite regulations, the platform established by the project with a number of administrations (ministries of the territorial, basic and secondary education administration) became essential in order to reduce fraud, preventing significant financial losses to the organization.

In concrete terms, in order to declare income electronically, an earnings declaration must first be generated in a well-defined digital format with parameters that can be set within the company's payroll software. Next, access to a computer with an Internet connection is required. Last, the employer follows just three steps: connect to the electronic declaration site, transfer the electronic declaration and confirm the results.

The long and difficult economic crisis which Cameroon went through between the mid-1980s and the early 2000s left its mark on the social security system managed by the National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNPS), plunging the country into a structural deficit that lasted until 2016.

Archiving is a set of processes, procedures and activities linked to the rational arrangement of information produced as part of an organization’s activity, to provide a reliable, authentic and comprehensive basis for decision-making. Systematically introduced at the National Social Insurance Fund (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale – CNPS) of Cameroon in 1976, it was thoroughly reorganized during the “Hibiscus” project in 2009.

An organization was established, coordinated by the Director General's Technical Advisor, to:

• raise awareness among partners and insured persons eligible for social benefits;
• increase the number of payment sites;
• create links in the payment chain by calling on third-party payers (banks and microfinance institutions).

When this operation was completed, the CNPS had identified 2,857 fictitious identities and produced a cumulative gain of XAF5 billion at the start related to fraud and operating costs and of XAF18 billion by the end.

We believe that the price reference system is no longer fulfilling its regulatory role. The elasticity of the rice ranges proposed was such that its application did not enable the Fund to fulfil its institutional mission.

The SETTING THE RATES RIGHT experiment is a managerial decision taken by the top management of the National Social Insurance Fund, Cameroon (Caisse nationale de prévoyance sociale (CNPS)) in June 2008 to ensure serene management of the Fund's resources on behalf of social beneficiaries.

This was one of the problems which led to estimated accumulated arrears in social contributions of nearly 600 billion francs between 1999 and 2000.

The economic crisis and the inefficiency of the unwieldy collection procedures which existed at that time were the main factors leading to this collapse. The financial equilibrium of the scheme was destroyed, and with it the confidence of the social partners.