Mbouda, Cameroon—When Fossi Yoni Mireille, 22, dropped out of secondary school two years ago, her future was bleak. She became pregnant and married her boyfriend, also a secondary school drop-out. They had no way of earning an income. Things took a turn for the better, however, when she was admitted to the Mbouda Women’s Promotion Centre, a field unit of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. Today, thanks to the education and training in vegetable farming and poultry techniques she received from the centre, Mireille runs a vegetable farm on which her small family thrives. "I make almost 130,000 francs (US$200) a month and my family is totally dependent on it," she says.
Mireille, like many others, has benefited from an Internet service provided by the Association for the Development of Women and Health (FESADE), a non-governmental organization (NGO), based in the capital Yaounde. FESADE is connected to the Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) started by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in September 1996.
It was not easy to introduce cutting-edge technology in a country with a mostly rural population and five telephone lines for every 1,000 people. This is why SDNP’s approach became service oriented, geared to helping people bridge the gaps in the local infrastructure through networking. Relying heavily on local resources, Wawa A. Ngenge, the national coordinator for the programme, managed to stretch the $250,000 in UNDP project funds two years beyond the planned two-year period. "We achieved this by relying on the resources of the network of members that we put together," he says.
The network consists of 300 members including scientists, NGOs, academics and government officials. "These people worked with us to identify areas of information technology which they could apply to their daily activities," says Ngenge. To reach out to poor communities, the programme’s ultimate target group, many members serve as intermediaries, working with the grassroots population. Among them are rural NGOs and women’s groups.
SDNP took off initially with three computers in Yaounde and later created a website, which was advertised by its links to other places. Now in its fourth year, SDNP has more than 100 people with electronic mail boxes spread over five of Cameroon’s 10 provinces. The programme has seven mailing lists with 330 members sharing information on a variety of issues on sustainable development. It also services more than 10,000 people through its Internet Help Desk.
Networking at the grassroots level
Monthe Giselle, Director of the Mbouda Women’s Promotion Centre, serves as an intermediary between FESADE and her institution. She travels 300 kilometres regularly to Yaounde for Internet seminars, training workshops and information exchange. Giselle shares this information and training with over 36 women’s socio-economic and cultural groups, which are spread over four towns and several villages. The women’s centre offers training in health and nutrition, dressmaking, farming and livestock breeding and has trained more than 100 women’s groups, as well as individuals.
Unlike the training centre in Mbouda, the Society for Initiatives in Rural Development and Environmental Protection (SIRDEP) in the provincial capital of Bamenda, 450 kilometres from Yaounde, is directly connected to SDNP’s e-mail server. This provides contact with its partners, and also helps the search for global initiatives to improve the living standards of rural communities. It is an invaluable tool for researching issues related to the environment, agriculture and livestock raising. SIRDEP works with over 40 diverse groups in the province.
Mama Dominica Lacombi, 57, is the leader of a group based in Mankon, a village near Bamenda, 370 kilometres from Yaounde. She depends on SIRDEP for information on modern techniques for breeding livestock. She is illiterate but that has not stopped her from being a successful entrepreneur. She told CHOICES that her eight-person group borrowed about $800 from SIRDEP and received training on pig rearing. The group now owns a pig farm with 60 pigs. "Since we initiated our links with SIRDEP, our standard of living has improved, as well as our vision for the future," says the mother of seven grown children.
"Nobody can underestimate the valuable role of the Internet in our lives today in Cameroon," says Clara Anyangwe, an agro-economist. Information downloaded from SDNP has assisted SIRDEP enormously in its training programme, which includes university graduates. The programme helps them to find jobs or to create small enterprises.
Heifer Project International (HPI) is a Bamenda-based international NGO concerned with livestock breeding and development. It depends on the e-mail and Internet services provided by SDNP, to communicate with its head office in the United States and project donors in Holland and other parts of the world. More importantly, the development network helps the organization to feed its national network of projects. "Seventy percent of our project partners and beneficiaries in Cameroon are women whose practical needs in livestock production are addressed by our organization with help from the networking programme," says D. Henry Njankoi, the deputy director.
Getting a good price for produce
Buyam sellams (pidgin English) are the women who buy and sell in small quantities. Economic crises in Cameroon have made many women dependent on selling a variety of produce to make ends meet. They join small njangis (informal cooperatives) that use the services of SDNP directly, or indirectly, for assistance in management, accounting and profit sharing. Julienne Tsangeu-Seppou captures it aptly, ‘‘By using the network, we also create our own local network by reinforcing capacities through women’s organizations. This helps to bring out the creativity and competencies of women."Ma Menye Elizabeth is one of many women who has discovered her hidden abilities. Two years ago, this widow who bought goods from the small town of Mbalmayo on the outskirts of Yaounde and sold them in Yaounde did not have 1,000 francs ($1.50) of her own. Today, because of assistance from EDUC-ACTION, an SDNP-connected NGO, she makes about 32,500 francs ($50) a week.
Although excited at having access to the Internet and e-mail, the people interviewed by CHOICES had one complaint: the problems faced when trying to use the Internet resulting from the poor quality of local telephone lines.
Ngenge, SDNP’s chief, says that this is a constraint to Internet expansion in Cameroon, and not a problem that SDNP can solve on its own. But SDNP has helped by providing cheap e-mail access ($16 a month) by installing servers in each province, where there are NGOs or small and medium enterprises that can host them. These servers can exchange mail with the SDNP server in Yaounde at night, when telephone service is cheaper and more reliable because there is less pressure on the few available lines. "Since few members can afford the Internet service," Ngenge says, "we provide them with the information they want. They send us an e-mail, we do the research, identify the appropriate web pages, download them, bundle them and send them out onto the network as attachments to e-mail."
Patricia de Mowbray, UNDP’s Resident Representative in Cameroon, is emphatic about information and communication technologies as tools for reducing poverty. "Information technology is one of the keys to reducing poverty and to allowing everyone—man, woman and child— to have access to such important assets as information for development purposes. This is one of the major instruments that I would like to put at the disposal of the Cameroonian government to support its strategy for poverty reduction."
Tamfu Hanson Ghandi is a journalist and former broadcaster with Radio Cameroon. He works for the communication unit of the Ministry of Economy and Finance.