Technical Education: Way Forward Towards Progress

Technical education remains one of the main support pillars for Cameroon to achieve its vision 2035 in which the country has to attain the emergence status.  As a concrete move towards attaining emergence, government put in place the National Development Strategy 2020-2030 which spells out the strategy guidelines that orientate development efforts to achieve the objectives set out in vision 2035.
The place of technical education has recently taken a central position in Cameroon’s educational priorities. The Head of State President Paul Biya in his message to young compatriots on February 10, 2023 on the eve of celebrations marking the 57th edition of the National Youth Day on February 11, 2023 said that government will prioritize the development of the educational system with emphasis on professionalisation. He stated that besides the traditional educational system, the government has set up vocational training centres of excellence in several localities and will continue to establish them nationwide.  Government has also launched the extensive programme to upgrade Rural and Artisan and Home Economic Centres (SAR/SM) to vocational training centres starting with that of Nkongsamba. Based on the experience of the Nkongsamba Centre, the over 288 SAR/SM will offer modern cutting-edge fields of study like wood processing, welding, mechanical manufacturing and mechanics. 
Government is fully aware of the fact that technical education is the way towards progress. Of late, more and more Government Technical Colleges are being created, many raised to Government Technical High Schools and some of them in cosmopolitan areas transformed into Government Bilingual Technical High Schools. Higher Technical Teachers’ Training Colleges are more and more created affiliated to State Universities. Some universities have Polytechnics and other institutions where students are trained in diverse technical fields.
Young Cameroonians need to make things right in their choices of educational pursuit and vocational training in order to secure jobs in ongoing or projected infrastructure projects. They have to fight to avoid situations where job openings abound in technical domains and they remain largely unemployed or only recruited to do minimal jobs because they are not qualified for the opportunities offered. The saying goes that in some former main infrastructure projects such as the Chad -Cameroon Pipeline Project, the Kribi Deep Seaport and other projects, the construction companies had to seek expertise from foreign countries for specific jobs because Cameroonian technicians did not qualify.  Technical work needs expertise and students need to be trained to supply the demands of the job market. It is not enough to go to school, it is enough to have the required technical skills that suit the job market in relation to the employment offers.
The country’s future is full of employment and job creation opportunities for compatriots who will have the required qualifications and skills to work on projects that are intended to catalyse Cameroon’s attainment of the emergence status by 2035 and beyond. President Paul Biya during his 2023 New Year message to the nation on December 31, 2022 announced the commencement of projects this year to boost the contribution of the non-oil mining sector that currently accounts for merely one per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product.  He stated that 2023 marks the commencement of the exploitation of the Kribi-Lobe iron ore that comprises of an iron enrichment plant, approximately 20-kilometres long pipeline and 60-megawatt of power plant. He also talked of the start of the exploitation of Mbalam-Nabeba i...