History (Historical Setting)
The foundation of MitaCCUL takes its roots from the creation of the first ever credit union in Cameroon (Njinikom Cooperative Credit Union Ltd) by Rev. Father Anthony Jansen in 1963. To be more precise, the creation of this giant credit union – MitaCCUL started in the form of discussion groups sometime in the late 90’s. These discussions were spear-headed by the Pinyin
Development Organisation (PDO). All other related social groups within Bamenda and its environs equally strategized their sensitization until 16th January 2000 when the launching took place at Longla Comprehensive College Bamenda, Cameroon. During the launching, about 500 potential members were in attendance and finally 137 got registered at the end of the day. Worthy of note is also the fact that about 7.5 million francs was raised as initial shares/savings of the credit union. One school of thought insinuated that the name should be “Millenium Cooperative Credit Union Ltd” with justification that it was being founded in the year 2000 (i.e the close of the 2nd millennium). However, another school of thought held that the name should be “Mitanyen Cooperative Credit Union Ltd”. On this note, this school of thought believed that since the word “Mitanyen” means “market for the Pinyin people”, the historical setting of the union and the common bond cooperative principle could always be remembered. Even though other schools of thought came up with other proposals for the name of the credit union, “Mitanyen” was unanimously adopted as the credit union name. However, this credit union is today operated by proud owners (Shareholders) from all over the nation with no racial or religious discrimination.
MITACCUL, with current membership of about 15,000, shares/savings of over 10 billion FCFA, net balance sheet total of over 13 billion FCFA, staff strength of over 75, twelve operational branches and eleven CasHubs as at December 2024 is the lofty initiative of her members, the PDO, the umbrella organ-CamCCUL, just to mention a few.