Aureol Mbakop: From Laborer to Multimillionaire Farmer

Discover the short story of this young Cameroonian who found his calling and managed to make his fortune in agriculture. In just 7 years, Aureol Sinclair Mbakop, a former laborer, managed to become a multimillionaire farmer.

A food and agricultural industry engineer, Aureol Mbakop got started in 2010 growing pineapple on half a hectare, producing 20,000 pineapple plants. An activity that earned him a great deal. Today, Aureol grows several crops across 100 hectares.

His passion for farming

In reality, the love story between agriculture and Aureol Sinclair Mbakop wasn't quite so immediate. This passion for farming grew out of his childhood stays during school holidays at his grandparents' place, where he worked in the fields.

The turning point

After his university studies, where he earned an engineering degree in the food and agricultural industry, he faced a major challenge: finding a job matching his qualifications. While looking for odd jobs, he managed to get hired at a pineapple plantation, where he worked for three years as a laborer. Inspired by his employer's example, the young man became convinced he should go into farming on his own.

With financial support from family members, he managed to rent half a hectare of land in Awae (Central Cameroon), on which he planted 20,000 pineapple plants - an activity that earned him a great deal. With this money, he decided to reinvest all his earnings, gradually expanding his farm by acquiring more land, and also chose to diversify his crops. This allowed him to go from half a hectare to nearly 100 hectares in seven years.

Success built on continued determination

Today, the revenue of Aureol's farming business is estimated in the millions. His company employs nearly 100 part-time workers, harvests more than a million pieces of fruit each year, and his fruit is sold throughout the Central Africa sub-region as well as in the European Union.