Involving Communication in Development

Development activities to be undertaken during the first ten years of Cameroon's drive towards economic emergence by the year 2035 were defined in the Growth and Employment Strategy Paper (GESP) of 2010. In Workshop Five that worked yesterday December 6 at the National Forum on Communication holding in Yaounde, professionals of institutional communication agreed that communication had been left out of the strategy. "We are here to include communication as a vector and catalyst in development," said Ufei Nseke, the moderator of the workshop.

Willy Niba of Radio France International, proposed that the examination of the country's communication strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats should be carefully assessed to see lapses and propose solutions. Sylvestre Onana, Cameroon's Communication Officer in Paris France, said international communication offices created abroad in 2001 should put into use Cameroon's global strategy for communication which still lies unused. He regretted the absence of a central unit to coordinate Cameroon's communication on the international scene.

For Norbert Eloundou Engama, a corporate communicator, it was a moment for sharing. "The idea of marketing used by businesses could be borrowed by the public sector to improve on the image of the country," he hinted.

The workshop was split into three sub-groups to dwell respectively on institutional or governmental communication, corporate communication and external communication.