Cameroon

Cameroon lacked a well-developed system of adult education in the late 1990s. Nonetheless, at that time recommendations were being made to develop new educational opportunities for adults seeking to upgrade their skills, learn a new trade, or change jobs. Because computer training was seen as absolutely necessary to increase the marketability of graduates of training and education programs by the late 1990s, the government sought new ways to encourage the inclusion of distance learning and high technology in education initiatives. The opening address at the government conference on vocational and technical education in Cameroon held in April 1999 specifically referenced the need to better train students in the use of technology, to prepare them for the types of jobs that would increasingly support the growth of the Cameroonian economy. As Prime Minister Musonge observed, "The prerequisite for the development of a country, the source of employment and prosperity, depends on the mastery of science and technology by its inhabitants, especially the youth." However, access to the Internet and to computers continued to be extremely limited in Cameroon at the start of the new millennium. Distance education arguably still was more readily accomplished through the media of television and radio in the late 1990s, as in 1997 there were 450 thousand televisions and 2.27 million radios in Cameroon. In 1998 only one government-sponsored television broadcasting station was operating while eleven AM radio stations, eight FM radio stations, and three short-wave radio stations transmitted broadcasts around the country. A law passed in 1990 which allowed for the privatization of radio was finally formally enacted in April 2000, leading to the multiplication of private and regional radio stations in the country.