2026/2027 academic year: Secondary education ministry turns screens into classrooms for disrupted learners.

Teachers sit behind tablets, cameras and microphones in a carefully arranged room, delivering lessons in French and English to students who are not physically in front of them. 

The teachers explain, students follow from screens, questions can be raised and lessons continue, despite the distance separating both sides.

The arrangement is part of Cameroon's attempt to keep secondary education going for students whose access to physical classrooms has been disrupted by insecurity.

The ministry resumed live online lessons on September 14, one week after the 2026-2027 academic year officially began nationwide. 

At the time of reporting, 28,470 learners had participated in the programme, according to figures recorded by the center.

The North West accounted for the largest share, with 14,031 participants, followed by the South West with 6,199 and the Far North with 1,333. Statistics also revealed that boys accounted for 14,866 participants and girls 13,604.

The numbers point to where the ministry's artificial intelligence and distance-learning model is being used most heavily: regions where insecurity has made conventional schooling difficult. 

Cameroon's North West and South West have faced years of armed conflict that have disrupted schools, displaced families and restricted movement. 

In the Far North, insecurity linked to armed groups operating around the Lake Chad Basin has also affected access to education.

The United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, estimates that more than 1.5 million school-age children in Cameroon need education assistance because of crises. 

Of these, UNICEF added, 865,029 are in the North West and South West and 564,091 in the Far North. UNICEF also identifies limited access to technology and the internet, particularly in rural and low-income communities, as a barrier to distance learning.

Cameroon’s distance-learning center

As the 2026/2027 school year gets underway, MINESEC is using live online lessons to keep thousands of students in crisis-affected regions connected to the secondary-school curriculum.

At MINESEC's Artificial Intelligence and distance-learning centre, the programme is designed to reproduce as much of the regular school timetable as possible.

Five studios are used to deliver live lessons covering subjects across the general and technical education streams, including mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and economics.

Lessons run from about 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., while students can access live classes through the MINESEC DLC application. The work, however, begins before a teacher appears on a screen. 

“Each Inspector General works with a team of teachers to prepare lessons and they are validated by our digital resource validation unit before they are dispensed to students,” the Director of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Distance Learning of MINESEC, Muluh Godson Ndahi, told The Guardian Post.

According to Ndahi, changes to the programme this academic year have enabled the center to run 43 lessons simultaneously, with up to 343 lessons delivered each day from Form One to Upper Sixth.

For teachers, that requires adapting classroom methods to an environment in which most learners are physically absent. Longning Ngigum, a chemistry teacher who has worked at the center since 2019, said teachers have been trained to use the digital tools while continuing to follow the national syllabus. 

“I teach chemistry lessons and use the digital tools and other textbooks to prepare lessons following the progression of our syllabus,” Ngigum said.

The system allows learners to interact with teachers remotely, including raising their hands and asking questions during live sessions. 

Ngigum said the objective is to maintain the same standard of teaching for students following lessons online. The online lessons are also part of a wider push by MINESEC to integrate digital technology into secondary education. 

Under Secondary Education Minister, Prof Nalova Lyonga, the ministry has rolled out interactive “magic boards” and other digital equipment in public secondary schools. 

The technology is intended to allow teachers to combine conventional classroom instruction with digital content such as videos, images and other teaching resources. 

Digitalization of classrooms but problems linger

For MINESEC, therefore, the artificial intelligence and distance-learning programme is no longer only an emergency response to disrupted schooling. 

It is increasingly being positioned as part of a broader digitalization of secondary education. But the expansion of digital learning faces practical barriers, including internet access, devices and electricity.  

For a learner to access the resources means a functioning device, an internet connection and, in many communities, reliable electricity.

The question is particularly important in crisis-affected and rural areas, where digital access remains uneven. The ministry is aware of the constraints. 

Recent comments by Minister Nalova Lyonga have acknowledged that expanding reliable electricity access across schools and communities is a longer-term challenge to be addressed with the hope by secondary education officials that schools can resume nationwide seamlessly as digital infrastructure expands.

By Cynthia Ebot Takang: She is an award-winning investigative journalist recognised for her outstanding reporting on the Anglophone crisis in the 2025 Open Society Foundation Reporting project

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3920 of Friday September 25, 2026