New partnership to speed up entrepreneurship, job creation

The university community in Cameroon has saluted the bold step by para-public companies in Cameroon to follow in the footsteps of the private sector to engage in industrial training partnerships with universities in the country to accelerate entrepreneurship and create jobs.

Para-public companies such as the National Refining Company (SONARA), National Port Authority, and the National Hydrocarbons Corporation of Cameroon, or SNH, recently signed partnership agreements with the National Advanced School of Mining and Petroleum Industries (ENSMIP) and the National Advanced School of Engineering at the University of Maroua to enhance industrial skills development.

According to Professor Ako Edward Oben, the board chairman of the University of Buea and the former rector of the University of Maroua, the partnership is to create an incubator for accelerating entrepreneurship and job placement for students upon graduation. It is expected that students, researchers and field engineers will, through this partnership, create an enabling environment to learn from one another, develop innovative ideas and acquire new skills.

“The learning process in traditional universities is changing and we have to adapt to these changes. Increasingly the world is moving towards entrepreneurial universities to direct and redirect new practical knowledge and technological developments,” said Professor Idrissou Alioum, the rector of the University of Maroua, after signing the partnership agreement with Jean-Paul Simon Njonou, the general manager of SONARA, on 31 March 2022.

The ceremony took place at SONARA in Limbe, the South-West region of the country.

Enhancing employability

According to Njonou, this partnership will boost the development of training programmes and ensure the employability of learner profiles.

He added that it will also give room for students to effectively conduct research innovations, enhance student engineering skills through apprenticeships, promote didactic collaboration and promote the products of both parties.

In addition, SONARA expects the commitments made by the University of Maroua to, through ENSMIP, provide continuous short-term training to SONARA staff, ensure capacity building to SONARA staff, and inform SONARA of the fields or areas in which the school plans to conduct research in relation to the activities of the refinery.

Professor Jacques Fame Ndongo, Cameroon’s Minister of Higher Education, said at the ceremony that industrial placement of students in professional university programmes has been going on in the past following an agreement with the Groupement Inter-Patronal du Cameroun (GICAM), the umbrella organisation of private-sector organisations in Cameroon.

“Professionalism is one of the pillars of higher education in Cameroon and one of the agreements with GICAM involves internships for professional disciplines like engineering, medicine and journalism,” Ndongo said.

He said that, with the para-public companies now coming on board, the partnership will deepen with the elaboration and designing of programmes that will fit training in the different professional fields.