The launching ceremony of the Association of Commonwealth scholars took place in the Yaounde II Subdivision on September 11, 2014.The main aim of this gathering was to congratulate the Masters and PhD students who won the scholarship awards and to pledge stakeholders to facilitate movements in making Cameroon an emerging country in 2035; The Post learnt.

The meeting comprised of stakeholders, Governmental organisations and Non-Governmental Organisations: the representative of the Minister of Higher Education, Wilfred Gabsa, representative of the Minister of External Affairs, the representative of Commonwealth affairs and the British Ambassador, who came together with the Commonwealth alumni by creating a platform where Cameroonians will benefit from the Commonwealth scholarship awards and to mare success in the lives of young Cameroonians to become future leaders of Cameroon in 2035.

Speaking to The Post, Prof. Mpoche Kizitus Nformi, executive president of the Association of Commonwealth Scholars declared that; “to gain a Commonwealth Scholarship is very competitive at the local, sub regional and international level. The most important aspect is the quality of projects that the different candidates produce the alumni association which is very contributive in this process by encouraging students to provide and produce good projects.

Our collaboration with other Commonwealth alumni in other countries is important, we need to work with them by sharing best practices in order to have high success rates in terms of scholarship schemes, and we will be able to let large number of Cameroonians benefit from these schemes like most of us did”.

Nformi says there are so many challenges due to the presence of many stakeholders, Governmental and Non-Governmental Organisation; making it difficult to establish network. He added that the study of projects that go in for competition for these scholarship schemes are submitted either at the university or at the ministerial level, making it difficult to have inputs and impacts of these selections because the decision was not existing before.

To improve on the challenges, meetings would be held to make a point with different stakeholders on issues of facilitating movements and facilitating needs. He expressed his gratitude to the British High Commission who facilitated these meetings and prayed that such meetings would be facilitated towards the technical knowhow and be brought together for greater inputs and output for the future.

The scholarship awards are launched every year by the British High Commission in Commonwealth countries in Africa which include Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Central Africa Republic and Gabon. Since their inception in 1959, over 30,000 individuals have benefitted from the awards and 200 beneficiaries came from Cameroon.