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The problem of falling educational standards in Cameroon has been posed severally from a purely educationist perspective. This study however goes from the premise that the liberalization of the Higher Educational Sector in the early 90s ushered in questionable capitalistic business practices by promoters of PHEIs in a bid to uphold their economic bottom lines as they would in any classical sector. This paper examines an extreme unethical mercantilist practice of deceptive marketing communication and its consequences on the brand equity of PHEIs in the Northwest and Southwest Regions of Cameroon. The study is cross-sectional with an exploratory approach. The study largely exploits primary data from alumni of fifteen (15) PHEIs. To mitigate for circumstantial time-bias in predictors, the researchers adopted stratified purposive and exponential non-discriminative snowball sampling. Six hundred (600) questionnaires were issued through the targeted population. For analysis, a Logit Model was applied and the simplified parameters for the various were obtained with the aid of the SPSS 16.0 software. The findings revealed a strong association between deceptive marketing communication and brand equity as it observed that, X2 (5,600) = 139.3 and highly significant (p-value of 0.0001). This was further confirmed by an insignificant Hosmer and Lemeshow Test statistic of 11.7 with a probability value of 0.165. The researchers recommend a review of regulations governing the Private Higher Education sector in Cameroon in terms of mentorship by state universities such that mentorship responsibilities include general operational and marketing supervision and not just pure academic supervision. Contribution/ Originality: This study contributes to the existing literature a unique eclectic approach that tackles the problem of education from the Psychology, Marketing and Education perspectives. The paper is equally the first logical analysis of the ethical implication of the liberalization of the Higher Education sector in Cameroon in the 90s.

The study examines the contribution of financial inclusion and community capacity building on pro-wildlife conservation behavior among rural households at the Northern Periphery of Dja Biosphere Reserve, the east region of Cameroon. The data were elicited through the survey questionnaire administered on a sample of 279 households involved in the program of conservation in the areas. The study used a cluster sampling approach in grouping proximity villages into four zones and a purposive sampling technique was used in selecting the households. The objective was achieved empirically using three-stage maximum likelihood estimation techniques; factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The result shows that financial inclusion and community capacity building had a significant positive effect on pro-wildlife conservation behavior. The magnitude of the effect of financial inclusion on pro-wildlife conservation behavior was even larger than the magnitude of the effect of community capacity building. The findings suggest that financial inclusion and community capacity building had the tendency to reduce the decline in wildlife stocks as it promoted friendly behavior towards wildlife and its habitats. The study, therefore, recommends policies that support financial inclusion and community capacity building that are essential for sustainable conservation since it promotes pro-wildlife conservation behavior.JEL Classification: G20, O15, Q57

The objective of this study is to investigate in to the drivers of private equity penetration in Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. Secondary data was collected from private equity and venture capital data bases (CapitalIQ, Preqin, Burgiss and Mergermarket), World Bank development indicators, regional private equity and venture capital associations and country specific stock market websites. The Panel Two-Stage Least Squares Instrumental Variables (2SLS IV), Panel Corrected Standard Errors (PCSE) and Feasible Generalised Least Squares (FGLS) estimation techniques were used. This was due to potential problems of endogeneity and spherical errors of serial correlation, heteroskedasticity, cross sectional dependence and multicollinearity. The results using the 2SLS IV estimation technique show that stock market capitalisation, GDP per capita, banking credit to private sector, real exchange rate and private investments are key macroeconomic drivers of private equity penetration in the selected Sub-Saharan African countries. Inflation had negative and insignificant effect on private equity penetration in the selected countries. The results using the PCSE and FGLS estimation techniques show that the signs of all the variables remain the same as was the case in the 2SLS IV estimation technique though the magnitudes were different. However, the results of PCSE and FGLS estimation techniques show that banking credit to private sector is significant in the FGLS model while private investments is significant in the PCSE model. GDP per capita, real exchange rate, stock market capitalisation and inflation are significant in both the PCSE and FGLS estimation techniques.