Youth affairs minister backs app to bridge training-employment gap.

The minister met recently with Patrick Ngounou, President of the Association for the Guidance of Pupils and Students of Cameroon, AOREEC, and founder of the Studentz digital platform.

Focus was to explore a partnership for the national rollout of the application within Multifunctional Youth Centres, CMPJs.

During the audience, Ngounou presented the features of STUDENTZ, a 360° mobile application designed to support young people from secondary school through to their first job. The platform draws on twenty years of expertise from AOREEC.

According to the developer, the application addresses the persistent challenge of youth professional integration and the mismatch between training and employment. 

He explained that it combines digital tools with field-based actions, and offers four core services: AI-driven guidance, providing smart orientation through a database of 1,400 universities and 30,000 training programmes, including 400 in Cameroon. 

According to Ngounou, the app also offers personalised mentoring, connecting youth with professionals from the diaspora. The app equally has a verified talent bank to match candidates with recruiters, and a digital observatory to collect real-time data on the career aspirations and paths of young people.

“We want to put digital technology at the service of guidance and mentoring, to create a bridge between verified talent and professional opportunities,” Ngounou said during the audience.

According to him, the primary objective of the meeting was to secure national deployment of Studentz within the CMPJs. 

Minister Mounouna praised the relevance of the initiative, aligning it with the vision of the One Youth, One Trade, One Job, JEME, project established at the Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training.

Technical discussions followed, addressing trainer instruction, connectivity within the centres, and the security and use of collected data. 

Ngounou provided assurances regarding the application's offline accessibility and data processing compliance.

At the conclusion of the exchange, the minister directed his departments to organise an in-depth working session with the Studentz team in the near term, with the goal of examining the terms of a framework agreement and launching a pilot project in five CMPJs within the coming weeks.

The ministry described the audience as a concrete first step towards a mutually beneficial partnership. If successful, the arrangement could enable Studentz to reach its target of impacting two million young Cameroonians within three years, supported by the Ministry’s institutional backing.

This article article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3736 of Thursday March 19, 2026