Cameroon's EU–UK EPA: A Trade Guide to the 2026 Tariff Reductions

Cameroon is the only country in Central Africa with a fully signed, ratified, and operating Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union, and it also runs a parallel EPA with the United Kingdom. For any business importing into or exporting out of Cameroon, these two agreements are quietly reshaping landed costs, sourcing decisions, and competitive positioning year by year. As of August 2026, the tariff phase-out has reached its 11th stage. Here's what buyers, suppliers, and compliance teams need to know.

Why Cameroon has an EPA, and why it's alone in the region

EPAs are the trade pillar of the EU's development-focused Cotonou framework with African, Caribbean, and Pacific states. Brussels originally set out to negotiate one regional EPA covering all of Central Africa: Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, DR Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and São Tomé & Príncipe. Talks launched in 2003 but never closed regionally.

Facing the December 2007 expiry of Cotonou's trade preferences, and the risk of losing duty-free access to the EU market overnight, Cameroon broke away. It signed its own interim EPA with the EU on 17 December 2007. It was ratified by Cameroon's parliament in July 2014 and entered provisional application on 4 August 2014. No other country in the region has ratified an EPA since. That makes Cameroon's agreement both a live case study and, for now, the only real gateway of its kind in Central Africa.

After Brexit, the UK negotiated its own near-identical agreement to preserve continuity. The UK–Cameroon EPA was signed on 9 March 2021, largely replicating the EU-Central Africa interim EPA's terms with minor adjustments, and has been provisionally applied since.

The core trade-off

Both agreements are asymmetric by design:

The EU and UK give immediate, unconditional access. All goods originating in Cameroon enter the EU and UK duty-free and quota-free, with no phase-in required.
Cameroon liberalises gradually. It committed to eliminating tariffs on roughly 80% of its imports from the EU (75% of tariff lines) over a 15-year transition running from 2016 to 2029. The UK deal follows a comparable, though not identical, schedule and carve-out list.

Cameroon's tariff lines were split into groups, phased in on a rolling annual timetable that begins each 4 August:

Group 1 covers medicines, medical equipment, fertilisers, seeds, and printing paper, goods tied to poverty reduction and public welfare. Phase-in began in August 2016 at a rate of 25% per year, and this group has been fully duty-free since 2019.

Group 2 covers clinker, food-processing inputs, trucks, tractors, and generators, inputs that support local production. Phase-in began in August 2017 at 15% per year, and this group has been fully duty-free since August 2023.

Group 3 covers commercial vehicles, fuel, cement, paint, motorcycles, and industrial packaging, the high fiscal-revenue goods. Tariffs here have been reduced by 10 percentage points per year since 2018, reaching 70% dismantling in August 2026 (up from 60% in 2025 and 50% in 2024). Full exemption is targeted for 2030.

Excluded/sensitive products, meat products, wines and spirits, malt, dairy, certain vegetables, wood products, used clothing, and select processed goods remain protected indefinitely, with tariffs of 5%–30% staying in place to shield domestic industry and agriculture.

What changed in the latest phase

On 4 August 2026, Cameroon's Ministry of Finance triggered the 11th phase of the tariff dismantling calendar. Group 3 goods, the commercially sensitive, revenue-heavy category covering vehicles, fuel, cement, and industrial packaging, moved from 60% to 70% duty reduction, continuing the fixed 10-percentage-point annual step. Groups 1 and 2 have been at 100% duty-free status since 2019 and 2023, respectively, so this year's real story is the accelerating exposure of the last protected category.

For sourcing and procurement teams, this is the segment to watch closely over the next four years: it includes goods that continue to generate meaningful customs revenue for the Cameroonian state, and it's the category most likely to see continued political attention as the full exemption approaches in 2030.

The fiscal picture: revenue loss vs. revenue growth

Tariff phase-outs cost the Cameroonian treasury money, but the numbers have stayed below early projections. Cameroon's Ministry of Economy has tracked cumulative customs revenue foregone under the EPA at roughly CFA88.3 billion by the end of 2024, rising to an estimated CFA103 billion after ten years of implementation (an average of just over CFA10 billion a year). Despite this, Cameroon's total customs revenue has continued climbing, surpassing CFA1,000 billion for the first time at the end of 2023, helped in part by a broader base of trading partners, with China now rivalling the EU as Cameroon's top trade partner by volume.

What this means for exporters and buyers

For EU/UK exporters shipping to Cameroon: Landed cost calculations on vehicles, construction materials, fuel-related goods, and industrial packaging should be updated annually every August, since the group-3 tariff step-down directly affects competitiveness against non-EU/UK suppliers (notably Chinese and other Asian sourcing, which doesn't benefit from the same preference). Group 1 and 2 goods, machinery inputs, medical supplies, and agricultural inputs, are already fully duty-free, so the cost advantage there is now locked in and stable.

For Cameroonian importers and distributors: The predictable, published annual schedule (each 4 August) makes it possible to time large procurement orders, particularly for vehicles, cement, and fuel-adjacent goods, around the next scheduled reduction rather than absorbing full duty ahead of a known step-down.

For compliance and KYC teams: Rules of origin matter as much as the tariff schedule itself. Preferential treatment under both the EU and UK EPAs requires goods to be "wholly obtained" in the originating territory or to meet product-specific processing thresholds. Misclassification or unverified origin claims are a common point of friction in due diligence; verifying a counterparty's actual trade history and HS-code-level shipment records, not just their stated preferential-rate eligibility, remains essential before extending payment terms or credit.

Looking ahead to 2029–2030

Both the EU and UK agreements converge on full liberalisation of the 80% import basket by around 2029–2030, at which point Group 3 goods should reach zero tariff alongside Groups 1 and 2. The remaining "sensitive" list- meats, alcohol, dairy, timber products, used clothing- is designed to stay protected indefinitely, reflecting Cameroon's stated priority of shielding domestic agriculture and light manufacturing from full exposure. Whether that protected list expands, shrinks, or holds steady will be one of the more consequential trade-policy questions for the region over the next few years, especially if other Central African states finally move to ratify their own EPAs and dilute Cameroon's current first-mover advantage.

Sources: European External Action Service (EEAS) EPA factsheets and brochures; European Commission DG Trade; UK Government (gov.uk) guidance on the UK–Cameroon EPA; Cameroon Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Trade statements; Business in Cameroon; Cameroon Intelligence Report; tralac Trade Law Centre.