In a bid to strengthen government’s decentralization drive. The Board of Directors of the Local Government Training Centre (CEFAM) recently met for its 73rd and 74th sessions under the chairmanship of Pierre Essomba, Secretary General in the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralisation, MINATD, representing Minister Réné Emmanuel Sadi. CEFAM’s Director, Mathieu Hagbe, served as rapporteur.

Meanwhile, CEFAM has this year embarked on a wide-range of continual training of council field staff from various regions to enable them champion the decentralisation process in Cameroon.

It is expected that by the end of the exercise, some 600 senior staff from all the councils would have been retrained. The current seminars at CEFAM on mobilising resources for financing development projects in their localities are meant for Council Secretaries General and financial staff.

To facilitate transport of its numerous trainees, the centre acquired a 30-seater bus early this year. CEFAM, the lone training centre for the staff of Cameroon’s 360 local governments (councils), was created in the British colonial days and reorganised by a 1977 presidential decree placing the school under the tutelage of the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralisation.

It has worked out standing technical agreements to improve its training curriculum with PNDP and the German GiZ-PADDL.