At launch of Cameroon Int’l Tech Summit: Gov’t restates need for synergy in digital transformation bid.

The call was made in Yaounde Monday by the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, Minette Libom Li Likeng, who represented the Prime Minister, Head of Government. 
This was during the launch of the Cameroon International Tech Summit, as part of efforts to strengthen the country’s digitalisation drive. It will run from October 28 to 30.
The ceremony was also attended by the Minister of Youth Affairs and Civic Education, Mounouna Foutsou, among other top officials. The summit is holding under the theme: “Technology, innovation, entrepreneurship and sustainability as tools for economic growth”. 
According to the organiser of the event, Engineer Ayuk Etta, the gathering, which brings together 350 participants from across the country, seeks to, among others, demonstrate how technology intertwines and drives every sector of the national economy and how it can serve as a catalyze for significant change.
The event also aims to promote digital transformation by encouraging the adoption and integration of digital technologies in all sectors, in a bid to influence innovation, efficiency and growth.
The gathering, which is tipped to bring together some 10,000 overall participants, is also being used as a tool to encourage collaboration and partnerships by notably facilitating networking between stakeholders from different sectors, including development and private sector actors and the government. This is aimed at sharing knowledge and creating synergies.

Gov’t hails summit’s organisers, restates need for synergy 
Speaking on behalf of the Prime Minister while launching the summit, Minister Libom Li Likeng, lauded the organisers for coming up with the idea. 
She said the government, as a body, is fully proud and supportive of such initiatives and holds them in high esteem. This, she said, is testified by the state’s choice of originally choosing the head of government to open the four-day event. 
She said such gatherings play frontline roles in accompanying the country in its bid to be transformed digitally as desired and championed by the Head of State, President Paul Biya, through multiple plausible groundbreaking efforts made in the sector over the years.

Broad-based synergy, way to go
Despite the positive reaction, Minister Libom Li Likeng insisted that more actions still need to be done to smoothly get the country to where it desires to be as far as the digitalisation journey is concerned. 
The minister recommended the spirit of working in synergy as the magic key towards attaining success in the sector. 
She said Cameroon, as a country, has the infrastructure and the needed qualified youthful human resources to have a smooth ride in the sector. 
However, she insisted that the nation still requires the multiplication of efforts by strategically bringing everyone on board to ensure that the ecosystem functions smoothly to give way for the sector to excel.
“There is one problem. It is the fact that digital transformation is a collective activity. If the entire ecosystem is not involved, if the administration, the private sector and everybody is not convinced to bring their contribution, these young people cannot succeed no matter the quality of their innovation,” she said.
“It means that no matter the developed nature of the sector, people need to change their mindsets and to be suitable to admit what has been developed. The commitment and the support of the government is to bring everybody together so that it will be a collective action,” she added, restating government’s commitment to continue supporting initiatives like the Cameroon International Tech Summit.

Uniting for a prosperous Cameroon 
The Cameroon International Tech Summit, which is mainly out to empower young people and entrepreneurs by giving innovators, entrepreneurs and startups a chance to present their ideas, is a mega project designed to use technology in changing the overall narrative of the Cameroonian society, according to its organiser, Engineer Ayuk Etta. 
Speaking to the press shortly after the launch of the work, Ayuk Etta, who is the Chief Executive Officer of fintech group, Mountain Hub, said the summit is the fruit of well-designed months-long activities, which began in January this year.
Ayuk Etta said he and his team, as part of the scheme, trained 1,000 young Cameroonians using gatherings like hackathons, which provided the youngsters with opportunities to build solutions that Cameroon needs as a country to attain economic growth using opportunities in the digital space. 
He said the Yaounde summit, which brings together 350 of the 1,000 youngsters who were trained, will not only give way for funding opportunities, but open doors for the youngsters to go through further mentorships. 
This, he added, will provide them with the capacity to create riches for themselves, their communities and the country at large. 
“Some people travelled from Maroua to be here, spending two days on the road and on the 72 hours hackathon. They have been working continuously for six days and then the summit. We think that with such resilience, anything is possible and we can build on it,” he said.
He expressed gratitude to institutions like the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, for strategic support. At the end of the launching ceremony, participants expressed gratitude for the opportunity. 
The Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Nanosatellite Missions Design, Dr Tadadjeu Sokeng Ifriky, whose company designs technology for space, said the gathering is crucial because it “gives us the opportunity to educate as much people as we can on what we do, but more importantly, on the importance of the space sector to Cameroon”.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post issue No:3274 of Tuesday October 29, 2024