University brain trust launched

The director of cooperation, partnership, communication and archives at the Special Council Support Fund for Mutual Assistance, FEICOM, Suzanne Ngane, has said the 360 councils in Cameroon are expected to present teams at the special edition of the university brain trust dubbed: “Cameroon Students Challenge, CSC.”

The competition that brings students at the master’s level in Cameroonian universities and institutions of higher learning will take place at the Yaounde Higher Teacher’s Training College, ENS, from November 28 to December 4, 2014.

The special edition of the CSC will be organised by the National and Foreign Press Observatory, OPEN, in partnership with FEICOM on the occasion of the latter’s 40th anniversary.

At a press conference at the Muna Foundation in Yaounde on October 2, Mrs. Ngane said the celebration of the 40th anniversary of FEICOM was announced for this year by the Board Chair and Minister of Territorial Administration and Decentralisation, Rene Emmanuel Sadi. The event is placed under the theme: “Decentralisation in Cameroon,” with President Paul Biya patronising.

According to her, getting councils, who are partners of FEICOM, present teams at the competition is a way of involving young people in the celebration and assessing what they think or know about the current decentralisation process in the country. The first three winning teams will receive their prizes at the peak of the anniversary celebrations in Yaounde.

The Spokesperson for OPEN, Nta à Bitang, said the forthcoming CSC is the second edition after that of May 28 to 31 in Buea which was organised on the heels of the Reunification celebrations of last February.

Disclosing that the University of Buea was the overall best at the first edition, he said their events are usually organised in partnership with donors under the patronage of the Ministry of Higher Education.

The Programme Advisor at CSC, Thierry Nguionza, presented OPEN as a Think Tank made up of people from diverse backgrounds noting that their activities are in line with the prescriptions of the Growth and Employment Strategy Paper of Cameroon.

He said students at the master’s level in universities who are their targets could contribute enormously in various ways to the success of the strategy paper on which Cameroon is banking to emerge by 2035 while re-echoing their slogan which is: “Youths are Ingenious.”

“Mobilising and training the Cameroonian youth to be apt leaders tomorrow is our major goal. The components of our programme border on the academia, culture and civic education,” Nguionza stated.

He said teams pre-selected for the competition by a commission would be endorsed by FEICOM. He noted that the five students to make up a team that must be mixed, bilingual and multi-disciplinary, must also be duly registered in their various institutions.

“Application files from councils for the competition would be forwarded to the Regional Agencies of FEICOM and after verification; they would be transmitted to the organising committee in Yaounde.

The files containing memoires of the councils will be publicly open in the presence of a bailiff and then forwarded to the scientific committee for academic evaluation. “Such memoires would then be forwarded to the jury for pre-selection.

Five teams would be retained for the final phase of the competition from November 28 to December 4, 2014 and at this stage, three teams would be eliminated and the best two will go in for the finals,” Nguionza narrated to the press.

He disclosed that a sculptor is already at work producing the various special prizes to be awarded to the winning teams that must be identified with the councils.

In a question and answer session, Nta à Bitang, explained that team members to be drawn from the universities must not necessarily represent councils from their areas of origin. “Students have the right to set up teams ready to work on decentralisation in preparation for the brain trust and approach the councils for validation and vice versa,” the OPEN Spokesperson stated.