please give us the technology.”
IN 1999 leaders from both Africa and the United State of
America met in Washington DC with the aim of drawing up what the US Secretary
of State at the time, Magdalene Upright called a blue print for US/Africa
relations in the 21st century. The former Secretary of State further
said, the US relations with Africa were defined by two main goals for America;
security and the economy. From August 4-5, 2014, American and African leaders
met in Washington again to among other things talk the economy. President Paul
Biya led the Cameroonian delegation to that summit. In today’s interview, Dr.
Nick Ngwanyam talks about what we must do for that summit to make economic
sense.
Exerpts
I just heard over the radio and television that there was
this US/Africa summit and that our country was participating and that the
delegation from Cameroon would be led by our Head of State, His Excellency
President Paul Biya. So, I kept my spirit open and was hoping that would be the
change that we have always wanted in Cameroon.
Why? Because we have had many delegations like that before led by the
Prime Minister, led by other ministers and led by the President to China,
Canada, Britain and to many other places. But I have always had the feeling
that there was not much coming out of it.
Do you
have the impression that summits like that are usually prepared?
There is no way you can go to a meeting without preparing.
You read a lot of things based on your understanding and on what the problems
are. You know you can read something like the bible all through yet you do not
know what the passage is talking about. You can interpret it from the surface,
you take it for it face value but there is more to it than that. I think it is
true that our politicians, our leaders have been preparing and reading about it
and putting things together, but I think they have been scratching a lot on the
surface.
When you
imagine that those who are appointed as ministers in Cameroon are not usually
technicians in particular fields and when a meeting like this comes and they go
there, don’t you think that they have to consult Cameroonians who master the
issues?
It is an unfortunate thing with Cameroonians and Africans.
The problem is that at many levels, you would see even when a technician is
appointed; they do not have a sense of creativity, they do not have managerial
skills and they do not have leadership skills. They cannot think out of the
box. You train someone as an engineer; he comes out only knowing engineering
and does not know how things work. That is why today in America, things have
changed. Even when you train as a medical doctor, you also take an MBA, a
Masters in Business Administration along side with it. That is, you are coming
out as a doctor, but you are a good manager. That is what is lacking in
Cameroon. Just because you trained as an engineer does not mean you know how to
manage. There is a lot to do with the way we train in Cameroon and if we do not
do that, we will really be in problems. We do not seem to know how things work.
People are in boxes. So you would have the doctors in their boxes, the
engineers of various types in their boxes, the journalist like you in your box.
We take a group of people and you send them to ENAM and you
call them managers. When they come out they have difficulties managing because
they do not know what they are talking about. So, we have all these things and
there is no meeting point. Someone who is trained as a manager in ENAM, his
thinking is limited because he does not have the technical input. When he has
technicians who are around him, most of the time they often worship and bow
before him instead of telling him the truth.
The Head
of State went to the US with a big delegation and you said you were attentive
to what was being discussed there. What did you come away with?
Minister Issa Tchiroma the other day spoke lengthily for about
45minutes. He gave a brilliant summary of what happened in English and repeated
the same material in French so that we could all benefit from that trip. He was
just giving us information and for us citizens of Cameroon, we have to react to
that information and what I am doing now is part of that reaction. We have to
react in a strategic manner so that it yields fruits. If the Head of State says
let us wake up brothers and sisters and work toward 2035, it is a vision he has
given us. When Tchiroma comes up to say this is what we went to America and
this is what we can do to take us to 2035, the question now is what exactly
should we be doing? That is exactly what we should be looking at.
Let us say a few things about why Africa is poor. We are very
rich. God has really blessed us more than our fair share, but we do not know
how to use our resources. That is where the problem lies. God has blessed us
with a lot of subsoil riches, fertile lands, vegetations including trees and
animals of all sorts, and he has blessed us with abundant rain, but we African
do not know how to use God’s resources. When God put man in the Garden of Eden
and said dominate it and multiply; by dominating it means use those resources
reasonably and intelligently. By dominating it and multiplying also means you
should use technology and add value and be part of that creativity, but
Africans are just destructive.
Are you
saying that the trip to the United State is part of the Head of State’s walk
toward 2035?
That is the way forward actually. If we do not follow what
happened in America and add more to it, we will never see 2035. If we are going
to continue with the education that we have in Cameroon now, if we are going to
continue with the kind of leadership that we have now- when I say leadership I
do not mean that leadership must change; but the manner and thinking of that
leadership has to change even if the persons are still the same. There is a
kind of thinking, leadership and managerial thinking that has to change. We
need to change what we are teaching our children in secondary schools and the
university. The education that we have now is not the kind of education to help
us do what America wants us to do. It is not the kind of education that is
going to help us get to 2035. It is a kind of education that was put in 1960
when we had independence and it just helps us to communicate and be able to
talk to the outside world; communicate with others and so on. It is not the
kind of education which helps us to be productive.
To be productive means that you take what nature gave you
which was raw and transform and add value to it to international standards and
sell it. The only thing that we are able to transform now is beer. That is not
good enough. We have to be able to be like South Korea, India, Malaysia and
Brazil. Short of these we are deceiving ourselves.
When we
talk of emerging by 2035, we have to be careful that we work together in our
various fields. Let’s take the field of health for instance, if you had
accompanied the Head of state to the United States, what would you have been
looking for.
Let us get a clear understanding here. There is what we call system
thinking. Even if I were the minister of health now, I would do
something to improve delivery of health care in Cameroon. But what I am going
to do is not going to be the best, why?
Because, there is no way you can have one sector in the country growing
when the other sectors in the country are not growing.
All the sectors have to grow together. If we build one of the
best hospitals, take for instance you have the Cardiac Centre in Shisong, it is
one of the best in central Africa. The level of health care and standards there
are very high, but when there is no road to go there, it does not help. If
there is no running water there it does not help. We can have the best
hospitals, if people in Cameroon go to stool and do not wash their hands after
that it does not help.
There are some basic things that we need to be doing so that
everything can grow harmoniously. If the level of corruption is as high as it
is, it does not matter how we work, it just hurts the whole system. So what I
am trying to say here is that, for us to be able to grow as a people, it is not
about one sector growing. The whole economy, all sectors, all departments have
to work. If all departments do not work, it will not work. It is like coming to
the hospital and I could be the best surgeon, but if the people in the
sanitation department are not washing the instrument well, and not sterilizing
them well, are not keeping the compound clean and there is no water, the whole
system would collapse. So it is about everything working well and that is what
strategic thinking is all about.
If the
leaders of all these sectors were in the United State and you were part of the
sector that has to do with health, what would you have been looking for? That
is the question.
The answers to the problem of our health sector are not even
in America. So you leave answers here and you go looking for them in America.
They are not in America. Even if you did not know, you Google search and click
on the internet, you would have all the results there.
I think going to America serves the purpose that 54 Heads of
States and government were there to be told to their faces that they are not
doing well and that they need to sit up. All what was said in America, we are
not as stupid as we look. It is just that Africans even when they know, they do
not apply knowledge. All what we were told in America, we are aware of it.
For instance we are talking about climate change and all
those kinds of things and we are told not to be burning our bushes, there
should be no “ankara” but we do that every year. It is not like we lack
knowledge, we know it but we do not apply it. It is not by going to America
that I would have known what we should do with our health services to improve.
If I were on that delegation, I would not be asking what to do. I would rather
be asking please give me this so that I can make it better.
Are you
saying that you would have asked them to come and teach you how to produce the
drugs here in Cameroon?
You are right on that score. There is only one and one thing
that we Cameroonians and Africans should ask America and that is what we were
taught in AGOA. There is no way that you
can change pineapple to pineapple juice and bottle it if you do not have the
technology for grinding the pineapple, mixing it, sterilizing it and you do not
have the technology for bottling and sealing in such a way that it can stand
American standards. So the bottom line of what we need to be asking for is we
should be asking for capacity building from America. That is the first thing we
should be asking for.
That capacity building means teaching our youths how to do
it. It is very important. If you lack the capacity of how to do it, it does not
matter how much America loves you, you would get nothing out of it. This is
because they want to help you produce for yourself and for them. We would still
spend our time digging out iron ore and selling to them. That is not it. We
need to build our capacities and come to the point where we do it ourselves. Do
it yourself. If you cannot do it yourself, then you have missed the boat. So
what we should have been asking from America is “please give us the technology.”
When we say “give us the technology,” it does not mean that we sit, fold our
arms and have American youths who have learnt coming here and running our
stuff. Yes, we would need those Americans to come to Cameroon; we would need
them to join us to set up companies for production. But we would need to train
our youths to be able to work with them so that in twenty years down the road,
there would have been a transfer of competences so that our own youths would be
able on their own to do it themselves. Short of that we would not have gotten
anything out of Americans. So if Africans went there, if at all they were
looking for anything, this is all they should be asking for.
What
surprises many Cameroonians is the fact that it looks like those who went to
America that is the African Leaders were going to receive not in exchange.
Yes, they were going to receive because you cannot give what
you do not have. What were they going to give? Nothing. Even if they were asked
to give, they have nothing to offer. So you can only give what you have and as
of now Africa has “nothing.” We have petrol and timber, we have things. We just
gather these things put them in containers and throw them away. We are just
throwing all those things away and we are really not helping ourselves. I must
say it again that we had nothing to give. Yes we went to receive, but what
exactly were we receiving? You know, out of the 54 African groups that were
there, they all had their expectations.
Some went there to receive knowledge and understanding of
what exactly should be done. Some went there thinking that President Obama
would give them a lot of money. Some went there thinking they were there just
for a holiday and there were all sorts of reasons why many people were there.
In fact if you gather all of them who were there and give them a test of what
happened there, I bet you 50% of them would fail the test. It is about
receiving from America.
I learnt a big lesson
before I went on the American trip in 2006, I could not think of a project past
FCFA 50million. When I went there and we were drilled for one or two weeks I
cannot remember. At the end of it I was able to think of a project for 5billion
without blinking eyes. They teach you to think straight, think out of the box,
think strategically, think positively and then use the master mind. When you are doing business with people, you
have to think win-win. Africans think win-loss. That is if I am doing business
with you Wain Paul, all the time I am thinking of how I can cheat you. I will
always have the 419 at the back of my mind. We think that we can grow by
cheating people, no.
You grow by helping the other person to grow so that together
you can go farther. Until we get to that point where we understand many of
these principles and begin to work with them in that manner, we would always
remain poor. As I was saying, Americans taught us how to reason out of the box,
to think big, to think positively and know that we have all that it takes
buried in us but the bottom line is that we are not aware of it.
I do not know whether black people were a cursed people.
Black in itself is not bad. Black is beautiful but unfortunately everything
evil has been labeled black. The devil is painted black, failure is black and
therefore, because the African man is black, he thinks that he is also a
failure. What I must say is this. Whether you are born black or white, the
brain capacity is the same. But the environmental condition in the US and other
developed areas, the way they think and so on account for the difference why
they seem to get on and the black man gets nowhere. It is just the way you
think and the way you were brought up. If you do not have confidence in
yourself; if you do not think that your brother can also do it; and you think
that it is only the Chinese or the South Korean that can do it, then you are
beaten before time.
Sometimes
people who studied even in America get excited. They go there and sit and
listen to their own classmates give lessons to them. What is actually wrong? Is
it that they go to those schools and they do not actually grab what they are
supposed to get?
You know as it is said, you can go through the university and
the university does not go through you. Being literate in one thing and being
educated is another. Using knowledge to solve problems is one thing and then
just having knowledge is another thing. Just because you have a certificate
which says you have a PhD is not good enough. It is about using that knowledge
intelligently because you have understood how to solve problems. That is when
the difference comes in.
Remember again, nature does not pay us for the PhDs or the
certificate we have. Nature pays us for using the knowledge and the skills we
have, to solve problems. If you cannot do that, you are not good. Many people
would come back from out there to Cameroon and expect government to give them
jobs. They begin to fight for positions. Then they get these positions and
become comfortable. They begin to see how they can go out on missions. They
create seminars sometimes many of them unnecessary just that they can steal
from the state coffers.
Their understanding of growth and riches is; how can I do to
steal from the state treasury? Which bribe can I take from whom to amass my
wealth? If that is the thinking, then of course we would never get anyway. The proper
mind set would be; each time you go and study and come back, what is it that I
can bring from out there to begin to change some of the things that I found
around here. The beauty of leaving from Africa to go and study abroad is that
when you move from our environment to go and study abroad; your mind becomes
open and you begin to see a lot of possibilities that people sitting here do
not see. So when you come, there are thousands and one opportunities out there
just waiting for you to bend down pick them and work on them.
You would create jobs, you would create wealth and you would
create all what we need. The failure that we have had with most of the people
leaving Cameroon to the Diaspora is the fact that many of them go and study and
the fields that they engage in; they still study the head knowledge; they still
study the subjects and when they come back, they cannot help us. Those of them
who have gone and studied professionally, many of them try to come back to see
how they can help. I think one good thing about our vision for 2035, one good
thing about the president and anybody going there is that we begin to change
some of the policies on the ground. Until now, let me also say that setting up
a business in Cameroon had been very difficult because of so many bottle and
corruption. People just want to reap where they did not sow. We have to make a
conducive environment to make many of the seeds to germinate.
Listening
to you, I understand that you are congratulating the Head of State on his
decision to lead the delegation to the US. He has gone. Those who were with him
received the information. We did not expect the Head of state to be everywhere
to make sure that people apply the knowledge. What should be done now for those
who went to have brought back the knowledge?
That is why I am motivated to speak now. I did not go with
the Head of state but I understood a lot of what is going on out there because
I have been to those trips twice before. What we should do as Cameroonians and
as Africans is to realize that knowledge that is not used is no good. So, we
have gone and we have been given knowledge. Now, we have to get the
understanding and begin to do things in the manner that would actually allow us
to benefit and change.
It is not the Head of State’s business beating the same drum
all the time. He has beaten the first drum and we have gotten the music for us
to begin to beat drums in like manner and begin to get things done. What I know
is that a couple of people are going to come together again at some meetings to
send motions of support. This one is not about motions of support. We have gone
past motions of support. It is about doing something if you truly love the Head
of State, if you truly love this country, if you truly love the youths and if
you really want us to progress it is about working. It is about doing things.
It is no longer the sing song. That is the message that we should get across.
Let all those who
travelled with the Head of State, let us not do what we continue to do in all
our seminars. I think if we were to check, we have more seminars than anyone
else but things do not seem to change because as we come back from the
seminars, all the notes and things that we got from the seminar, we lock them
up in the cupboard and look forward for the next seminar. So I am going to tell those who went out
there “you went and you were told what to do, it is about doing. Begin to
educate the public and begin to make up openings and channels so that we can
actually grow. If you do not do that it would not change.” As I was
saying before, they have been many other trips like that before to China but
nothing seems to change. I think we should cast that evil spirit from us and
begin to actually make use of knowledge.
The
summit focused more on economics, wooing businessmen from the US to come to
Africa and then, we preparing something to offer to America in terms of goods.
How do we go about attracting Americans to come and invest in Cameroon?
Let us be very clear about something. There is no way anybody
can survive without economics. When we are talking economics and about
Cameroon/America, Africa/America, Africa/China and so on, it is not something
that is out of the blues and we do not understand. But the same concepts; we
can still bring them down to the family level. If we were to discuss economics
at the family level, then you would understand what we ought to be doing. In
every family, you have a family head, the mother, kids and a few people living
with them. On the farm they are growing some crops. They might have some few
chickens, goats and some cows. From that farm they make their living. They send
children to school, they build their house, they pay for health care. So for all that is produced in the family
from the farms and whatever, and if the father is working in a government
office or industry, he brings in income. So in a year, you can gather all what
the family has earned and called it their family income. This is exactly the
same thing that a country does. An intelligent family does this, they grow,
yams, cassava, plantains, vegetables and keep a few chickens. So, they eat from
the farm and only once in a while they will go and buy milk, perhaps because
their own cows are not producing. If they wanted soap and their mother had
learned how to make soap, they would take some “mbanga” or what so ever for them.
So the more that family can generate what they need, the
richer they would be because they are not spending. If that family had a farm
and are not growing any vegetables, doing nothing and only depending on the
father who works then there is a problem. I guess you can understand this very
well, those of you civil servants who are in Yaoundé, you have no farms. You
have a family and everybody is depending on your money to be able to survive.
That is very tricky. So it does not matter if you are earning FCFA 600.000 a
month. It is still not enough. That is the same thinking.
Africa is like that. We have a lot and we grow a lot of
cocoa, a lot of cotton and we take the cotton as it is and we sell it to
people. The people take the cotton as it is and put it in their machines and
like the Turks, they would make a super 100 and I would pay FCFA 150000 to get
one. But the total amount of cotton that
went into it was bought at a thousand francs. So, they have added value in the
whole thing so that by the time that cotton is coming back to me I am paying
through my nose for it. In Africa it is about economics.
If you have not learnt how to add value to what you have, you
would be cheated, you would remain poor and you would not provide the jobs.
Even as we talk this economics, let me also paint another picture for us so
that we understand. I can say here that Saudi Arabia is a very rich country. I
can also add Dubai, United Arab Emirates and those countries that produce oil.
God gave them oil. They just woke up one morning and discovered that they were
sitting on oil. So they bring in American companies or French companies to tap
the oil. When they tap the oil, they take 50% of the oil and give back 50% to
them. With this 50% that they give back to Saudi Arabia, they turn around again
and send their engineers to come and build airports, roads and sea ports for
the Saudi Arabians. They still take away the money. At the end of the day, they
take away 75% of the money. The 25% that is left, the Saudi Arabians would
still use that to buy Chinese rice and to buy African tea. So, they just sit
there on top of oil, tap this oil and spend the money. That is not what God
asked us to do.
In fact, if you go to Saudi Arabia now or Dubai, they are
very developed. In fact Dubai beats
America in many of their facilities, but in reality that is not riches. True
riches are in the human person. If you D.I.Y, that is the best. If you develop
the capacity and you ‘Do It Yourself’, that is it. What I am saying
is, those Saudi Arabians, if they tap the oil, use the money from taping the
oil and build the best universities; send their first children to Germany,
America to go and learn technology, come back to Saudi Arabia and strengthen
their university system to teach technology and engineering. Now, as long as
those roads, sea ports and airport are built by Saudi Arabians and not
Americans, they truly would be rich. If they just sit and drink tea and have
Indians and so on working for them, they are not rich.
So, what am I getting at? I am getting to the fact that even
in Cameroon, if God were to bless us with so much oil that we just invite all
the American companies to come right now and here; that in the next five years
all our roads and sea port are built, and yet the Cameroon still remains as
stupid as it is now, then we would not have changed. We think that we are rich
just looking at the externality. In reality, we are poor. Real riches are in the mind,
training, the way you think and not in the external things that you are seeing. If the external things that you are seeing
are a product of your mind and hands, then that is good. But as long as you
mind and hands can produce nothing other than “miondo and Koki Corn” that is
not good enough.
This
analysis that you have made, is it common to somebody in the village?
No, it is not common. What I am giving you now is called revelation
knowledge and is part of creativity and not given to everybody.
What I am doing now, I am just speaking the truth. I am speaking the word and I
am sending the word out there. When you send the word out there, it does not
come back empty. It has nothing to do with whether you are a minister or what.
The word is the word, and Divine revelation is Divine
revelation. That is the only way we have to go. We have to learn technology. We
have to learn how to do it ourselves. Whether you are the son of a minister or
the son of a pauper, start now. It is like a race. If you start now even if you
were a pauper, you become rich down the road.
I have
asked that question because like you said, we must depend on economics to
develop. Now, the common people, those who are supposed to be part of the
system; if they do not master the basic economics, are we not going to wait for
a very long time?
As I speak to you I am a medical doctor but on my own I had
to read economics. I had to read the principles of economics. I had to read
management. I had to study how to start and manage a small business. These are
the kinds of things that make people grow. In Cameroon, we send people to the
university and we condemn them to stay in boxes. They do not think out of the
box and when you do not think out of the box, there is no way you can grow.
Growth only comes by thinking out of the box.
You know Cameroonians think that when you go to the
university, you go to this faculty and learn Biology. You go to the other and
learn Geography and that is it. No, that is not it. You have to learn
strategically and think strategically. Otherwise all you are learning would
amount to nothing. So if I can make another blanket statement; all
the learning that we had and the total amount of learning in Cameroon is not
the learning that we need in 2035. We have to change that knowledge
base. It is like what you have put in the computer. The programs you put in the
computer is what you use to work with. If you want your computer to perform
better, you delete all what is in there and introduce something that is better.
So we have to delete what is in Cameroon
and introduce something that is higher and better.
Remember
that we are talking about the recent trip by the Head of State and a delegation
to the US. If we were moving at 20km per hour, can you say that with that
summit, we have increased our speed?
If we are moving at 20km an hour toward 2035, by going to this
summit what has happened is, President Obama and his consultants at the other
end just told our presidents that we are driving at gear one and we have to
shift to gear three. The question now is, how do we shift to gear three? The thing
is, if we do not shift to gear three, 2035 would never come. We are driving in
a wrong gear and we must switch gear. If we do not switch gears, we are
deceiving ourselves. Practically, how do we switch gears? If I may answer this,
I said you do not give what you do not have. So it has very much to do with our
thinking process and attitude. His Eminence Christian Cardinal Tumi taught me
something. He has been teaching many other people. In the course of his
teachings there are six things that we must do as individual, as a group and as
a nation to be able to succeed. I had said it before and I must say it again.
We must like work.
We must like work that is well done.
That is the second point. The third point is we must be honest. We must have self
discipline. The fifth, we must pray
to our God. It does not matter. You and I, we pray to the living God. That
is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We are spirit beings and we are
controlled by the spirit. Some other people would pray to the spirit of the river
or the stone. That is their business, but we are spirit beings and we must
pray. The sixth point is, we must respect
the environment. It is very important. So, you see, it has to do a lot with
our attitudes.
The first two point, you must like work and the second one is
you must like work that is well done. So out of six, two have to do with work.
If you go back to the story of creation, you would realize that God spend six
days working and rested on the seventh day. We as Christians, or Muslims, if we
must worship God, we must know why he created us. Once you know why God created
you, then you would be able to live a very fruitful life.
God created us essentially for four or five things. The first
reason why God created us was for us to worship
him. The second one is for us to praise
him. The third reason is for us to love
him and to that he also said, we must love our neighbor as ourselves. These
are the three most important reasons why God created us. When he sent Adam and
Eve in the Garden of Eden and asked them to rule over it, to dominate and to
multiply, that is our next calling. We
have to work. God worked for six days so we must work. There is no way you
can grow by fey-mania. Africans have been trying to grow through fey
mania.
We must work and we must learn the principles of work. The next point is that you must
like work that is well done. Work that is well done means that you are working
effectively and efficiently; that you are using the resources appropriately. If
you call a bricklayer to do you a foundation and he just takes the cement and
throws over the sand and so on, you will not be happy. So you have to use it in
the manner as to get out the most benefit and reduce waste. When you work and
get resources out of it, it is not just for you, it is for everybody.
Therefore, we have to be able to realize that we live in a community and we
have to be able to share our resources amongst ourselves. There is no need
trying to amass resources only to yourself and leaving other people in the cold.
So in our dealings again, we always have to have a win-win mindset. We always
have to work for common good and this is the approach.
The Head
of State and his delegation were over there to talk to the American about what
we can offer in terms of goods. If tomorrow the Americans decide to increase
their appetite for our goods, can we increase supply?
They are not going to increase the appetite for our goods if
we have not yet learned how to produce those goods to meet their appetite. That is where the problem lies. There are two kinds of goods
Americans want. They want raw goods and ‘cooked’ goods. Raw goods are what we
have now and that is what we have had for the last sixty years. We have learnt that just selling raw goods
would never make us rich. Even when we sell, the little that comes in a lot of
people just pilfer it. We have to cook the goods before we sell. So it is about
the process of cooking the goods to American standards that we need to learn
and to grow in that light. Without that we would not make it. So, probably I
should say how we should cook the goods.
How do we
process the goods?
To process the goods means we have to develop the knowledge
and skills on how it is done. We know that in a household, when a mama wants to
fry puff-puff or pancake; it looks simple but the daughters who are growing
with her must learn the techniques otherwise tomorrow in their marriages they
would not be able to do the puff-puff or the doughnuts and whatever. So
everything has a process. Everything has got a way. How do you do it from step
1, 2, 3. What are the ingredients, energy, kinds of machines needed and how
much time do I have to put in? All these things are skills. You have to learn
them. Telling stories is in the past. “I was in Britain, I used to be a “sous
prefet,” I was… I was…” is in the past. The “I was” is over. It is about what
have you done and what can you really do.
That is the kind of thinking. Like I was saying, we have to
change the curricular of what we study in our schools. You know as of now,
Cameroon has four different types of education. We have what you call the
grammar education and the technical education. The grammar education is broken
down into two-the French grammar education and the Anglophone grammar
education. Then you have the Anglophone technical education and the francophone
technical education. In fact if we sit down at our table and try to do what is
right, we would end up with just one education.
The other day at the University of Bamenda, there was a
professor from the University of Buea; he showed that Cameroon needs forty
thousand engineers and technicians to be able to face 2035. Without those forty
thousand technicians and engineers, we are wasting our time. Those technicians
need to be trained appropriately and have the appropriate attitude. So, how do
we get those engineers? How do we get our youths to be thinking in the right
direction? As of now, 90% of the people we train in Cameroon are just story
tellers. Only 10% are productive. We need to be like Germany and switch things
around where 90% of people who go to the university should be able to produce
and only 10% to go into professorial kind of thing or so.
How do we do that? We need to go out there and ask the South
Koreans. We need to ask countries of group B. What did they study and how do they think? We have to copy. If we do not copy, we would never jump from group
D pass C and B. While the people of
group B are struggling to get to group A, the people of group C are struggling
to get to group B. Nigeria and South Africa are struggling to be like South
Korea. But we in Cameroon are spending all our time drinking, running after
women and writing petitions. That is not the way.
We would ask the South Koreans; this is in a technical
fashion. What is it that you study in your secondary schools, high schools and
in your different universities and they would give us. We would collect that,
and then we would go to Brazil, India and turkey and ask them the same. Once
they give us the information, then we would come and put what we got from the
primary, secondary and the university together. Then we would send in
statisticians and technicians and people who know what all is about. They would
study what is studied in secondary schools in all these countries and would
bring that out. When they bring that out, we would take it and put it together,
that is common ground. So we would do this for secondary school, high school
and the university. Once we have got this information, then we can translate it
into English and give it to Anglophones and into French and give it to
francophone.
Remember it has nothing to do with technical school, grammar
schools, Anglophone or francophone. Once we have done this education would be
education. In that education, the students
would be given 60-65 or 70% would be heavily weighted in science, maths,
engineering and technology, what we call STEM. To make it Cameroonian, we would
add English and French to it. Then we would include civic education and
customer service, marketing and computer science. Our country could be very
rich but we fail because Cameroonians have a very poor attitude.
Many
people think that one thing which is making us stay behind when it comes to
business is the fact that we do not have the culture of saving. We want to
spend all that we have in the next three, four days and then we sit and wait.
No. Doing business and savings are not the same thing. I
would disagree with that. I have observed something though. In 2005, I wrote an
article that was published in the newspapers, “Why are Cameroonians poor.” Ma
Viban in the US embassy said I would have changed the title and made it a
little bit more positive, maybe “Why are Cameroonians not rich.” You see it
means the same thing. When you say “why are Cameroonians not rich,” it sounds
more diplomatic. There is a problem with
the way we think. I would put it in another way. Look at the former West
Cameroon. To the east of the West Cameroonians are Bamilikes, and to the west
of these West Cameroonians are the Ibos. What is peculiar about Ibos and
Bamilikes is that they are very hard working people, business minded and know
how to make things work.
What has happened over the years is that, they have come into
former West Cameroon and have been living with us since 1950. What would have
happened with us by infusion is that Anglophones would have even been better
businessmen than the Ibos and bamilikes. But you would notice that Anglophones
do not learn. They think it is about having degrees that matters. They think it
is about sending your children to US and sitting and boasting over a beer that
I have three or four children in America. That is not it. We got it all wrong.
If you go into the
Bamenda main market, you would see what I am telling you. There are very few
Mankon people or Anglophones for that matter that own sheds inside that market.
Go along the Commercial Avenue, all the big buildings there, they belong to the
Bamilikes. The Anglophones are like this; a father would die and would live
three, four sons coming from five wives, they would quarrel and the “chop
Chair” or whatever would sell the property, grab some of the money and throw
the land away to the Bamilike. The bamilike takes the land and we are relegated
to the background.
That is our thinking. We do not say o.k. you want to build a
house, fair enough. I do not have the capital but can we build and share. We
have to change our thinking. There is something wrong with the way we a
brought up. That is where the problem is. It is not by saving.
Let me just tell you a story. I went to the graduation at the
University of Buea; that was two years ago. I noticed that many of the children
who graduated from there had degrees in banking and finance. They were quite a
crowd. This reflected at the National Fund for Employment. I went to the
National Fund for Employment and I was talking to someone and they were
distressed.
The gentleman who was collecting applications for job
opportunities was a little bit frustrated because of all the applications that
came in, 90% were banking and finance from the Anglophones. The question, we
are asking is this, whose money do you want to bank when you do not know how to
make money? So we have to learn how to be entrepreneurs. We have to learn how to
make money. That means we have to study how to create companies,
study how to how to make money, study how to change water into wine.
When you
look at the car on our streets, the latest mark that comes out even before
people get it in countries where they are fabricated, they are already in
Cameroon. It looks like we want luxury. Can people who want luxury develop?
There is a kind of luxury which is stupid. That said, if you
had worked very hard you can bless yourself. But if you are blessing yourself
after doing nothing, it becomes funny. One thing in Cameroon is that we want to
celebrate. That is why we keep celebrating. We celebrate this anniversary. From
when we finish celebrating one anniversary we go to another one. We keep
looking for a reason to celebrate. We have a culture of celebration and
enjoyment and very little culture of work. There is a problem
there. There is an issue of ego. When you go to America, see the blacks that
have gone to America. You see those ones that are on ten dollar an hour-jobs or they just go to
America and looked for something doing. They did not go up the ladder to study
and be somebody. They just look for something doing and they buy the biggest
cars and the biggest houses. It is to keep up their ego. When they are coming
home they take money through credit card and so on to come and spend. It is
more of just trying to paint an image that does not exist.
When you
go through our street, you find things picked up in the streets in America
being sold. The fear is that even if we process our own goods, we may not even
have a market here because people would prefer things picked up the streets in
America.
The things that are sold here from America express a need. Somebody
is filling that need by looking for a quick way of meeting to those needs here
and now. We just need to learn the technology. Bring the technicians from
America to help us in the industry so that we can start producing the same
things. Then, we would stop throwing our money away. Let;s go to the furniture
sector. If we bring in the companies that know how to season our wood very
well, that know-how to work the wood, we would be able to do the chair, the
doors and window frames just exactly like the ones in America. By the time we
do that, there will be no need to import a chair from America and rather we
would be able to sell some of those chairs to Central Africa.
DR NICK NGWANYAM, MD
CEO ST LOUIS GROUP
POB 661 BAMENDA
NORTH WEST REGION
REP OF CAMEROON
REP OF CAMEROON
TEL( CELL) 237- 7776 46 74
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