Higher Education Minister, Jacques Fame Ndongo, says his ministry is requesting FCFA 58 157 426 000 in the 2014 fiscal year to carry out four programmes through which higher education could be effectively professionalised.

Speaking after defending his Ministry's budget before the Budget and Finance Committee of the National Assembly early Wednesday morning, Professor Fame Ndongo said the development of the technological and professional component of higher education and the modernisation and professionalisation of faculties will occupy centre stage in 2014. Other areas of interest will be the development of university research and innovation as well as governance and institutional support in the higher education sub-sector.

Minister Fame Ndongo disclosed that all these will take the form of equipping pedagogic blocs, laboratories and amphitheatres, the construction of a 1,000 capacity seats library and a building assigned for distance education at the university of Yaounde II as well as continue the operationalisation of new establishments opened in newly created university institutions. The Minister equally announced that there are possibilities of opening new fields of study and or possible creation of other universities and establishments in 2014 and much more, strive to implement the teaching system reform in the medical field that will entail from next academic year, the recruitment of 800 students in public medical training institutions in a bid to get closer to international norms and standards prescribing one doctor to 1,000 inhabitants.