The billionaire owned the modest Société de Fabrication de Cahiers (Safca – copybook manufacturing company), Pilcam (Electric Batteries), Unalor (Matches) and Commercial Bank of Cameroon (CBC) among other chain of businesses.

Fotso was born in 1926 in Bandjoun, West Region of Cameroon. At the age of 15, he quit school to work in plantations in Foumbot and Bafang. It was in 1947 that he moved to Mbalmayo and started business. He constructed a commercial center nine years later.  In 1955, he engaged in transport business but stopped it in 1960.

In 1970, he birthed the Société Africaine de Fabrication de Cahiers (SAFCA). He later created PILCAM Company specialised in the production of electric batteries.

With his business growing, he branches out after 1960 into public transport. And, in partnership with French Pierre Castel, big boss at Brasseries et Glacières Internationales (BGI) he invests in wine and spirits import. Some years later, another French man, Jacques Lacombe, then Managing Director of Société Industrielle et Forestière des Allumettes (SIFA), a subsidiary of Compagnie du Midi, introduces him to the industry. With the support of this former Polytechnique student, who passed away in 1996, Victor Fotso gradually expanded his activities.

Owner in 1970 of the modest Société de Fabrication de Cahiers (Safca – copybook manufacturing company), he found himself a quarter of a century later, at the head of about ten companies in various sectors: electric batteries (Pilcam), hospitality (Ibis Douala), matches (Unalor and CIS), packaging (Fabasem), chemistry (Fermencam), agro-industry (Proleg), food (Sopral). In 1997, Victor Fotso creates Commercial Bank of Cameroon (CBC-Bank), first independent establishment in Cameroon.

He was re-elected in abstentia as Mayor of Bandjoun after the February 9, 2020 municipal elections.

Business magnet Victor Fotso in July 2019 donated FCFA 1 billion to the Roman Catholic Church of Bafoussam as part of his contribution to the construction of a cathedral in the region.

The patriarch made the gesture July 29, 2019 in Banjoun during a thanks giving mass celebrated by the Bishop of Bafoussam Dieudonne Watio and his auxiliary Mgr Emmanuel Ndassi.

The multi-billionaire had promised to assist the Catholic Church in Cameroon, committed to the construction of a big Cathedral in Cameroon’s West region headquarters Bafoussam. As such, he made the promise to donate 1 Billion FCFA last May during a thanks giving mass in Bandjoun.

The construction of the said Cathedral in Bafoussam is reported to be evaluated at some 6 Billion FCFA and scheduled to end in beginning 2021.