The Dean of the Faculty of Education, FED, in the University of Buea, UB, Prof. André Mvesso, has asserted that Cameroon can only emerge by 2035 if all societal components interact and the curricula of Higher Education is re-orientated towards industrialisation.

The varsity don made the assertion in Buea recently, during a two-day workshop organised by the FED on the theme; “The Contribution of Higher Education to the Achievement of Vision 2035.”

“We need a new objective for a new society,” Mvesso stated. To him, if Cameroon is to attain vision 2035, higher institutes of learning have a greater role to play.

“We must re-oriented a number of things in our higher institutes of learning, starting from our curricula, teaching methods and, above all, instil positive attitudes in students.

We should not train students in schools without any objectives. Our students need competence to be able to compete in the changing and industrialised world. Nothing is static and we are engaged in a battle of competition,” Prof Mvesso averred.

According to him, emergence is a process which begins with scientific training, industrialisation and development.

“Creation of higher education institutions here and there does not mean emergence,” he observed.

He affirmed that Cameroon has adopted a democratisation of education whereby anyone is free to go to a school of his or her choice, which is good, but can only lead to the realisation of vision 2035 if the educational schedule in Cameroon is redirected from administrative to technological or scientific based system at all levels.

According to Prof. Roland Ndip, UB Registrar, 2035 is too far for a country which is richly endowed with abundant natural resources like Cameroon to emerge.

“If Cameroonians are not honest, 2035 will meet us just where we are, like the other development objectives we set some years back which have come and gone and we are still where we were,” Ndip stated.

To the representative of UNESCO Director at Multi-sectorial Regional Office for Central Africa, Felix Loiteohin Ye, education plays a vital role in the development of a country.

It is a step-by-step process and the population, especially the young, has to be trained and introduced to the very idea of what and where a country wants to be at a particular time.

“UNESCO is assisting the Cameroon Government in drawing the plan of education in such a way that, all important factors that can be made real are taken into account. The men and women who have to make real this dream have to be trained now and not tomorrow,” he said.