A bicycle in bamboo (made in Ghana), stands as an attraction among the wide range of everyday household and office products exhibited at the lobby of the main building of the Ministry of External Relations where a workshop for stakeholders on the consumption of this important plant ends today in Yaounde. The forum was officially commissioned on August 5, 2016.

Attended by mayors, craftsmen, and state officials from various government ministries, the stakeholders were edified on the values of bamboo and rattan plants in boosting the economy especially in mountainous and remote areas.  It was an occasion to raise awareness on the development status and world trend of bamboo which is a treasure plant in Cameroon yet underdeveloped as in Ghana, Ethiopia, India or even China.

In an inaugural lecture, the trainer from xxx (IMBAR) based in China, Mrs Jin Wei said the three aspects of the training notably Bamboo plant and furniture, Bamboo plantation and Bamboo construction will enable the trainees explore various possibilities of bamboo which is conducive to the ecology, mitigation and adaptation to climate change, income and job generation as well as improvement of livelihoods. The training, she recalled is the first of its type since Cameroon signed a Memorandum of Understanding with IMBAR in November 25 2013. “This training is President Paul Biya’s decision for local skills to be built on the sidelines of the Regional Workshop on Bamboo and Rattan to hold in Yaounde from 11 to 12 August, 2016,” said the representative of the Minister of External Relations, Tousse Juteau.

For his part the representative of the Minister of Forestry and Wildlife and Director of the Promotion and Transformation of Forestry Products, Mahamat Habibou observed that the transformation of Bamboo gave rise to  a thousand five hundred products touching all aspects of human life and accounts for over 60 billion US Dollars in world trade, ahead of banana.

Since 2010 over 200 Cameroonian stakeholders of the bamboo and rattan sector have been trained by IMBAR which is an intergovernmental organization with a membership of 41 member states, 80 per cent of which are African. The atelier ended with IMBAR stating as main priority the tailoring and targeting of services to member countries to promote the recognition of Bamboo and Rattan in the national economy and in the developmental and social agenda.

Cameroon Tribune