The Minister of Higher Education, Professor Jacques Fame Ndongo, has called on all heads of both State and private university institutions to work for the modernisation of higher education and professionalisation of courses to imprint the participation of the Ministry of Higher Education in the efficient training of people to lead Cameroon in its strive for emergence by 2035.

While receiving New Year wishes from the staff of his ministry on Friday January 31, 2014, Professor Jacques Fames Ndongo congratulated the staff of the ministry for their commitment. He remarked that through their efforts, Cameroon has a coherent, diversified and performing higher education system.

Minister Fames Ndongo also used the occasion to announce an innovation which is the introduction of a new Excellence Awards in higher education called "Les Grand Prix d'Excellence Superieur" which has as objective to reward excellence of university institutions, on the one hand, and university lecturers on the other hand.

The Excellence Awards will comprise five grand categories notably the domains of pedagogy, research, support development, institutional development and university governance. The New Year wishes presentation was also an occasion for the minister to congratulate university lecturers who have been promoted to higher grades.

Speaking earlier, the Secretary General in the Ministry of Higher Education, Professor Horace Ngomo Manga gave an exhaustive balance sheet of the activities of the ministry in 2013. The ceremony was an opportunity for the staff of the ministry to assess last year's activities and brainstorm on this year's activities.