At conference in Yaounde: CAMTEL GM urges young women to dare in community, public leadership.

Held under the theme: “Leadership development and sustainable impact networking session”, participants came from parts of Cameroon and beyond.

Addressing the women during the event, the keynote speaker, Judith Yah Sunday Epse Achidi, who is General Manager of Cameroon Telecommunications, CAMTEL, described the gathering as a perfect platform to further boost the already flouring efforts made by Cameroon to promote women-led development initiatives.

According to the CAMTEL boss, the TechWomen initiative will go a long way in giving women and young girls the chance to do proper networking that will in return, elevate them to higher heights.

Going personal, Judith Yah Sunday Achidi said her company is fully dedicated to supporting the course taken by TechWomen Cameroon and their global partners. 

She said the organisation is fully engaged in assisting ongoing scheme and the entire initiative as its quota of contribution in boosting the already flourishing women’s emancipation agenda in Cameroon. 

This, she said, is because such initiatives are one of the major avenues for national development. 

“CAMTEL is a high-tech company. It is a company with a focus on information and communication technologies, ICTs. It is but normal for us to support women who are engaged in such an initiative,” the CAMTEL GM said.

“They (women) are at the heart of this scientific field which is very technological.  It is an honor and a privilege for CAMTEL to accompany the association of women assembled globally by this United States of America initiative,” she added. 

The move to support women-led initiative, the CAMTEL GM boss emphasised, fully falls in line with the company’s individual policies which is designed to give women equal opportunities especially in the field of technology and in a broader scale, in leadership position.

“Today the world is evolving at an unprecedented pace, presenting both challenges and opportunities. The role of women in tech is more crucial than ever before. We are not just contributors. We are catalysts, architects of change and pioneers of innovation,” she said in her keynote address. 

“At CAMTEL, we hold gender equality and women empowerment as core values for our country’s performance. We try to forge an environment where every individual, regardless of gender, has equal opportunities and advantages,” she added. 

According to the CAMTEL top executive, “this commitment is demonstrated through the representation of women across the various levels of the organization; from leadership roles to positions of responsibility”. 

Speaking further, Judith Yah Sunday urged women and girls to be selfless and unapologetic in their drive and efforts geared towards joining the ICT world and successfully making a career in the domain.

She enjoined the TechWomen Cameroon officials, its members and the general women spectrum to use her personal story as an example. 

The telecom executive who began her career at CAMTEL as an internal auditor before rising through to the rank of a regional head and later to her present status as the company’s general, challenged the women to be courageous, hardworking, dedicated and patient. 

Enter Aurel Tayou

Taking the cue during Tuesday’s ceremony, the President of TechWomen Cameroon, Aurel Tayou, said the ongoing five-day series will open doors for Cameroonian women in the fields of sciences, technology and mathematics which she said are at the heart of the most dynamic entrepreneurial ecosystems in the world.

“We can but only come out from such a group with a good network, mindset that is necessary to make us ready and capable of facing the changing the world,” Tayou said. 

According to Tayou who is an alumnus of the TechWomen initiative that grooms women and young girls, bringing on board a telecom giant like CAMTEL will help the association in achieving its goals.

“We are sure that CAMTEL is going to help us have a bigger impact in our community because we started some initiatives and we want to touch more of our young girls, women and boys. We need the strength. We need the support to achieve our goal and we know that with the support of a high-level leader of an organization like CAMTEL, we are going to achieve that,” the TechWomen Cameroon boss stated. 

“The program concerns all the women especially all the 21 concerned countries. It has nothing to do with societal status. It looks at the concerns of women who have the capacity to make an impact. Women with leading capabilities, women that are capable of accompanying others and help them realize important things in their countries,” Tayou added.

Other participants at the gathering included the members of the Cameroon National Youth Council led by its president, Fadimatou Iyawa Ousmanou who was one of the key actors in the opening ceremony in Yaounde. 

The works were coordinated amongst others by TechWomen’s Jayne Farrell Ranker and renowned Cameroonian female tech guru, Germaine Ashu. 

Other top participants included Seena Shankar, Nikita Vala, Jessica Newi, Lengha Abega.

A workshop held on Tuesday as part of the series was coordinated by Sarah Laskey, Shawne Van Deusen-Jeffries and Veronika Oget, all officials brought on board by TechWomen.

TechWomen initiative

TechWomen, it should be said, is an initiative of the United States, US Department of State Bureau for Educational and Cultural Affairs.

The program empowers, connects and supports what is considered to be the next generation of women leaders in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics known shortly as STEM. 

The project covers countries in Africa, Central and South Asia and the Middle East by providing them access and opportunity needed to advance their careers, pursue their dreams and inspire women and girls in their communities.