Ogbe Abunaw has joined the long list of Cameroonian academics that have successfully conquered education home and abroad after he bagged a PhD in Strategic Management from the Swiss School of Business Research in Zurich, Switzerland.

Dr Ogbe Abunaw said it was not an easy journey from the University of Buea Cameroon where he earned his BA with honors in History and Political Science to the University of Bolton, UK where he earned his MA in Human Resource Management to Harvard University, USA where he again earned a Professional Development Certificate in Management and Leadership.

Speaking exclusively to Cameroon Concord News, Dr Ogbe Abunaw said he remains deeply grateful to his mother Hon Rose Abunaw for her unwavering love, and support. Dr Ogbe furthered that this achievement belongs to her and to his entire family; friends and mentors who helped turn his dream into reality.

More than a personal milestone, Dr Ogbe Abunaw’s research carries value for the community and the global stage: it translates rigorous research into practical strategies that local businesses can adopt, informs community development and public policy toward more sustainable growth, and strengthens research visibility through international collaboration and elevates the discourse of strategic management on a global platform, and equips students, practitioners, and policymakers with evidence-based frameworks, mentoring, and opportunities to translate insight into impact wherever they are.

By Chi Prudence Asong with files from Soter Agbaw-Ebai

As Cameroon’s English-speaking regions grapple with a devastating separatist violence and economic collapse, Catholic schools are launching a bold shift toward technical education to transform jobless graduates into community “problem solvers.”

The Bishops and Catholic Education Secretaries of the Bamenda Episcopal Province – which covers the Anglophone regions – announced the strategic pivot during their August 18 Provincial Council of Education meeting that was held on the sidelines of the 78th Ordinary Meeting of Bishops of the Episcopal Conference taking place in Bamenda from Aug. 16-22.

Moving away from theoretical curricula that “churn out job seekers,” Catholic schools will now prioritize technology and engineering, which emphasize hands-on, problem-based learning that encourage students to apply their knowledge to real-world situations.

Father Charles Ngouobi, the Catholic Education Secretary for the Archdiocese of Bamenda said the diocese has opted for that shift that could “bring major change in the country by introducing technical and tertiary education into our secondary schools.”

His words echo the desperation of university graduates who told Crux they “live hand to mouth, barely able to feed themselves.”

Alphonse Mbidzenyuy, a lay Christian youth in the same diocese graduated from the University of Yaoundé with a master’s degree in history. Today, he washes cars to survive.

“Academic degrees don’t mean a thing in Cameroon today,” he told Crux. Earlier this year, some 200 PhD holders staged a demonstration in the capital Yaoundé, complaining that they hadn’t been recruited into the civil service. Many, like Mbidzenyuy, have deferred to doing menial jobs to keep body and soul together.

The rate of unemployment in Cameroon looks low, at just 3.51 percent. In urban centers, however, the situation is dire, with between 24 percent – 35 percent of youth unemployment. All of these still mask a deeper problem of under-employment and a large informal sector.

“If you look around town today, in Bamenda, for example, you find that we have many boys who are bike riders.  And it will embarrass you to know that some of these boys have master’s degrees,” Ngouobi said.

“Therefore, we have decided to go technical with the belief that when these children graduate, they will be able to employ not just themselves but also create jobs for others. And we want to implement a system also that will be able to enable students who are in the general education, especially the science students, to be able to make a bridge from general education to technical education,” the priest said.

Father Edward Siani, the Catholic Education Secretary for the Mamfe Diocese in the country’s South West region, explained further that Catholic education “is about the formation of the whole person.”

“And we are trying as much as possible, be it from the kindergarten, to form kids, to form people who will be catalysts of change in the community where they find themselves. That is, we start helping them to be problem solvers in the community,” he said.

The radical switch to technical education, according to Archbishop Andrew Nkea of Bamenda came because he listened to the Christians and they said they wanted to pivot from grammar schools to technical schools.

“The people told me, Bishop, we don’t want any more grammar schools here. We want technical schools. So I have St. Andrew’s Technical College. We have opened St. Peter and Paul Technical College in Ndop. We are opening another technical college in Bambui. And we are adding a technical section to St. Joseph school, Mankon,” Nkea told Crux.

“My focus in this diocese is on technical education. I keep insisting that China and the other developed economies did not develop because they knew History and Geography. They made progress because they trained the children to use their hands and create employment for themselves,” he explained.

The archbishop said it was critical for Cameroon as a country to rethink its educational system, noting that Catholic schools in his diocese will start producing engineers “at very young ages.”

He cited the case of a young boy who used bamboo to make his car powered with batteries, and which he used a remote control to drive it.

“These are brains wasting in Africa, and yet our educational system cannot tap these brains and that is why my focus in the archdiocese of Bamenda is technical education,” Nkea said.

The Provincial Council of Education meeting was also used to assess the performance of Catholic schools in the Episcopal Province over the past year.

Bishop George Nkuo of Kumbo noted that the 2024/25 academic year was a resounding success, given the performance of Catholic schools at the General Certificate of Education Examinations.

“Our schools performed exceedingly well in the last academic year, with many of them scoring a hundred per cent at the GCE examinations,” he said.

However, he regretted that the continuing separatist violence in several parts of the region doesn’t create the perfect environment for children to learn.

Nkuo complained about problems with infrastructure, explaining that most school infrastructure have dilapidated, some have been destroyed by the conflict.

Source: Crux

About 300 civilians were forcibly displaced from Banga-Bakundu in Cameroon’s Southwest Region in June, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The U.N. agency reported that the civilians moved to nearby communities, including Banga, Muyuka, Bombe-Bakundu, and Mbalangi. OCHA said the displacement was a result of the community’s “strategic position,” which has made it a flashpoint in the ongoing conflict.

Since 2017, government forces have been fighting separatist fighters in the Northwest and Southwest regions who are seeking to create an independent state called Ambazonia. The conflict has killed more than 8,000 people and displaced nearly 500,000 refugees and about 400,000 internally displaced people, according to OCHA figures.

Tensions spiked in June around official examinations, including the First School Leaving Certificate (FSLC) on June 10 and 11, and the General Certificate of Education (GCE) from June 3 to June 20. OCHA recorded eight attacks on the education sector, as non-state armed groups threatened parents and teachers not to participate in the exams.

In addition to the fighting between government forces and separatist groups, OCHA reported ongoing tensions between farmers and herders in parts of the Northwest’s Donga-Mantung department. The disputes are linked to grazing lands and damage caused by livestock. On June 16, a Fulani herder attacked and wounded two women in their field in Dumbo, accusing them of trying to seize his cattle. Similar incidents were reported on June 19 in Misaje and on June 26 in Mamba, where a Fulani herder and a woman were injured, respectively.

Source: Sbbc

A university in Nigeria has sparked outrage after a video went viral showing female students being touched to see if they were wearing bras before taking part in an exam.

In the footage, female staff at Olabisi Onabanjo University in south-western Ogun State are seen touching some students’ chests as they queue to enter an examination hall.

The university has not yet commented on the video, but a student leader defended the bra policy as an attempt to ensure students dressed “modestly” and to maintain “a distraction-free environment”.

However, he acknowledged that other ways were needed to enforce the policy that has been condemned by critics as archaic, sexist and likened to sexual assault.

A senior official at campaign group Human Rights Network told the BBC that students could sue the university for violating their rights.

“Unwarranted touches on another person’s body is a violation and could lead to legal action. The university is wrong to adopt this method to curb indecent dressing,” Haruna Ayagi said.

A student who did not want to be named told the BBC that the university enforced a strict moral code despite not being a religious institution.

She said their clothes were always being checked.

In response to the outcry, the president of the university’s students’ union, Muizz Olatunji, said on X that the university promoted “a dress-code policy aimed at maintaining a respectful and distraction-free environment, encouraging students to dress modestly and in line with the institution’s values”.

He added that the policy was not new, and the union had “engaged with the institution to explore alternative approaches to addressing indecent dressing, focusing on respectful and dignified interactions between students and staff”.

He also published the dress code, which included a ban on any clothes “capable of making the same or opposite sex to lust after the student in an indecent manner”.

The university was founded in 1982 as Ogun State University when Olabisi Onabanjo was state governor. It was renamed after him in 2001.

Source: BBC

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who has died aged 87, was a titan of modern African literature – a storyteller who refused to be bound by jail, exile and illness.

His work spanned roughly six decades, primarily documenting the transformation of his country – Kenya – from a colonial subject to a democracy.

Ngũgĩ was tipped to win the Nobel Prize for Literature countless times, leaving fans dismayed each time the medal slipped through his fingers.

He will be remembered not only as a Nobel-worthy writer, but also as a fierce proponent of literature written in native African languages.

Ngũgĩ was born James Thiong’o Ngũgĩ in 1938, when Kenya was under British colonial rule. He grew up in the town of Limuru among a large family of low-income agricultural workers.

His parents scrimped and saved to pay for his tuition at Alliance, a boarding school run by British missionaries.

In an interview, Ngũgĩ recalled returning home from Alliance at the end of term to find his entire village had been razed by the colonial authorities.

His family members were among the hundreds and thousands forced to live in detention camps during a crackdown on the Mau Mau, a movement of independence fighters.

The Mau Mau uprising, which lasted from 1952 to 1960, touched Ngũgĩ’s life in numerous, devastating ways.

In one of the most crushing, Ngũgĩ’s brother, Gitogo, was fatally shot in the back for refusing to comply with a British soldier’s command.

Gitogo had not heard the command because he was deaf.

In 1959, as the British struggled to maintain their grip on Kenya, Ngũgĩ left to study in Uganda. He enrolled at Makerere University, which remains one of Africa’s most prestigious universities.

During a writers’ conference at Makerere, Ngũgĩ shared the manuscript for his debut novel with revered Nigerian author Chinua Achebe.

Achebe forwarded the manuscript to his publisher in the UK and the book, named Weep Not, Child, was released to critical acclaim in 1964. It was the first major English-language novel to be written by an East African.

Ngũgĩ swiftly followed up with two more popular novels, A Grain of Wheat and The River Between. In 1972, the UK’s Times newspaper said Ngũgĩ, then aged 33, was “accepted as one of Africa’s outstanding contemporary writers”.

Then came 1977 – a period that marked a huge change in Ngũgĩ’s life and career. For starters, this was the year he became Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and shed his birth name, James. Ngũgĩ made the change as he wanted a name free of colonial influence.

He also dropped English as the primary language for his literature and vowed to only write in his mother tongue, Kikuyu.

He published his last English language novel, Petals of Blood, in 1977.

Ngũgĩ’s previous books had been critical of the colonial state, but Petals of Blood attacked the new leaders of independent Kenya, portraying them as an elite class who had betrayed ordinary Kenyans.

Ngũgĩ didn’t stop there. The same year, he co-wrote the play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), which was a searing look at Kenya’s class struggle.

Its theatre run was shut down by the government of then President Jomo Kenyatta and Ngũgĩ was locked up in a maximum security jail for a year without trial.

It was a fruitful 12 months, however – as Ngũgĩ wrote his first Kikuyu novel, Devil on the Cross, while in prison. It is said he used toilet paper to write the entire book, as he did not have access to a notebook.

Ngũgĩ was released after Daniel arap Moi replaced Mr Kenyatta as president.

Ngũgĩ said that four years later, while in London for a book launch, he learnt there was a plot to kill him on his return to Kenya.

Ngũgĩ began self-imposed exile in the UK and then the US. He did not return to Kenya for 22 years.

When he finally did return, he received a hero’s welcome – thousands of Kenyans turned out to greet him.

But the homecoming was marred when assailants broke into Ngũgĩ’s apartment, brutally attacking the author and raping his wife.

Ngũgĩ insisted the assault was “political”.

He returned to the US, where he had held professorships at universities including Yale, New York and California Irvine.

In academia and beyond, Ngũgĩ became known as one of the foremost advocates of literature written in African languages.

Throughout his career – and to this day – African literature was dominated by books written in English or French, official languages in most countries on the continent.

“What is the difference between a politician who says Africa cannot do without imperialism and the writer who says Africa cannot do without European languages?” Ngũgĩ asked in a seminal, fiery essay collection, named Decolonising the Mind.

In one section, Ngũgĩ called out Chinua Achebe – the author who helped to launch his career – for writing in English. Their friendship soured as a result.

Away from his literary career, Ngũgĩ was married – and divorced – twice. He had nine children, four of whom are published authors.

“My own family has become one of my literary rivals,” Ngũgĩ joked in a 2020 LA Times interview.

His son, Mukoma wa Ngũgĩ, has alleged that his mother was physically abused by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.

“Some of my earliest memories are me going to visit her at my grandmother’s where she would seek refuge,” his son wrote in a social media post, which Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o did not respond to.

Later in his life, Ngũgĩ’s health deteriorated. He had triple heart bypass surgery in 2019 and began to struggle with kidney failure. In 1995, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and given three months to live.

Ngũgĩ recovered, however, adding cancer to the lengthy list of struggles he had overcome.

But now one of African literature’s guiding lights – as Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once called him – is gone, leaving the world of words a little darker.

Source: BBC

In a significant boost to educational development in the Lake Chad Basin, the Force Commander of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), Major General Godwin Mutkut, has commissioned the newly constructed and fully equipped St. Joseph Nursery School in Mora, Cameroon. The project forms part of the MNJTF’s Civil-Military Cooperation (CIMIC) initiative aimed at promoting education and rebuilding community infrastructure in conflict-affected areas.

The newly inaugurated facility features two modern classrooms and a staff room, designed to provide a safe and conducive environment for early childhood learning. Speaking at the commissioning ceremony, Major General Mutkut emphasized the central role of education in fostering long-term peace and development.

“Education is not just a priority—it is a necessity,” he declared. “We must lead by example and invest in our children’s future to counter the narratives of those who oppose learning. Without education, there can be no progress.”

General Mutkut also highlighted the MNJTF’s broader efforts in implementing quick-impact projects across the Lake Chad region. These initiatives are intended to alleviate the suffering of communities impacted by terrorism and insurgency, while fostering stronger ties between the military and local populations. He called on the Mora community to take full ownership of the new facility and ensure its proper care and maintenance.

In her remarks, the Director of the school, Ms. Justine Suke, expressed profound appreciation to the MNJTF and the African Union for making the project a reality. “This school will lay a solid foundation for the future of children in Mora and neighboring communities

Source PRNigeria

Cameroon faces a major education crisis as a four-day national teachers’ strike begins on April 22nd. The “Ecole Morte” movement, led by the Collective of Teachers’ Organisations of Cameroon, unites more than a dozen unions demanding urgent reforms.

At the heart of their six key demands: the organisation of a national forum to rethink the education system, the upgrading of teachers’ special status, and a collective agreement for private school teachers. The strike follows a warning issued in March.

While the government has opened talks, including a meeting at the Ministry of Public Service on April 17, unions say the steps taken are not enough. Teachers are calling for immediate action to address chronic problems and ensure a stable environment for their profession.

Source: Africa News

For the last few weeks, many foreign students living in the US have watched as a sequence of events has repeated itself on their social media feeds: plain-clothes agents appearing unannounced and hauling students off in unmarked cars to detention centres.

Those taken into custody in a string of high-profile student detentions captured on video have not faced any criminal charges and instead appear to have been targeted for involvement in pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses.

The Trump administration has said repeatedly that visas are a “privilege” and can be revoked at any time for a wide variety of reasons.

But the crackdown appears to be far wider than initially thought, with more than 1,000 international students or recent graduates at colleges across the US now having had their visas revoked or legal statuses changed, according to a tracker from Inside Higher Ed, an online news site covering the sector.

For many, the precise reasons are unknown, and universities have often only learned of the changes when checking a government-run database that logs the visa status of international students.

The combination of targeted detentions and reports of wide-scale visa revocations have left campuses on edge, from the biggest public universities to elite Ivy League institutions, students and faculty told the BBC.

“I could be next,” said one student visa-holder attending Georgetown University, who has written articles about Israel and the war in Gaza.

He’s begun carrying around a card in his pocket that lists his constitutional rights, in case he is ever stopped by law enforcement.

Another student in Texas said he’s afraid to leave his apartment, even to buy groceries.

And at some colleges, departments are being hit as researchers abroad refuse to return to the US.

Most students the BBC spoke to requested anonymity out of fear that having their names in the media could make them a target.

Source: BBC