Cameroon: ICT body wins 15M Fcfa youths

Cameroonian centre for Information and Communication Technology, ICT and Non-Governmental Organisation, ADCOME, has won the 2007 Global Junior Challenge Award worth FCFA 15 million. The award took place in Rome, Italy, from October 3-5, sponsored by Digital World Foundation.
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Communication Agent at ADCOME, Calsidine Toufo commented that the money will be ploughed-back into the Cameroonian youths via the projects of ADCOME, which are aimed at bridging the Digital Divide within the national territory, Information Technology, IT and Education. “We’ve sent a proposal to Rome already. These entail what we’ve been doing; going to remote areas in Cameroon to install multimedia centres, we need more vehicles to access the country, buy more and good quality computers to improve on our services,” she added.

Human Resources Assistant at ADCOME, Frederick Tinefeh corroborated; “We’ll employ ICTs to market products in our society. This will be done in the programme ICT and Rural Entrepreneurship. We’ll take one-step forward from the school milieu to meet other youths in the society who need to be ICTs oriented. We’ll use ICTs to transform the other challenges in our Cameroonian society to opportunities. We shall look at persons in the agricultural sector to use ICTs to market their products in the internet. We shall train them on that.”

Tinefeh found in the award more challenges for ADCOME. “We intend to continue to win narrow the IT gap in our country.”

The Global Junior Challenge Award is designed to young people and to schools to identify and reward best case practices on the use of ICTs in Education and Training.

Tinefeh explained how ADCOME got to be part of the award; “We looked at how ADCOME has been implementing its ICTs projects to schools across Cameroon. We employed software development components that facilitate learning processes in schools in Cameroon. That made us different from the other contestants. We prepared the feedback of the award and sent it with our colleague Julius Nganji who went and represented us. The finalists were selected by a committee and then forwarded to the President of Italy, who subsequently and officially received them for recognition. So, ADCOME was on the spotlight as one of the leading platforms of ICTs selected.”

ADCOME is amongst the leaders of ICTs in Cameroon. It provides young people with access to internet and allows them to discover, develop their potentials for a positive impact on the socio-economic landscape of Cameroon via ICTs.

It is planted in eight provinces of Cameroon and has so far engaged more than sixty-thousand students, young people and teachers nationwide. They are breaking new grounds in the African continent, with the inauguration of an ADCOME Centre in Bamako, Mali slated for December.

Students on internship from the University of Buea’s departments of Journalism and Mass Communication and Management respectively at ADCOME, are currently criss-crossing some parts of Cameroon to prospect for schools that could be linked to the Information Superhighway Technology.