Imagine this scenario, you are given an important piece of property to maintain, and your contract last 5 years. At first you are hysterical, happy, you have a great new job, and also the security you will not be fired over the next couple of years, your first days are great, dressing up nicely everyday, treating everybody nice, taking care of the property, consulting your employer for any important decision. Everybody likes you.

Over the next couple of years, you grow incredibly good at your job, earning the respect of your employer, so you consult him less and grow more independent. Your great work earns you an extension for another 5 years. Great right ?

At the 10 year mark, you consider yourself a veteran, an experienced and knowledgeable person who knows it all and needs little outside advice, if you started at 20, now you are 30, do you remember your thought process at age 20 ?

Your ideas about how to run the property evolve with you, and because you believe you had been successful in the past you think you can do this your whole life.

But you see thats where you start getting it wrong.

Your ambition and vision starts to distort your real mission, from taking care of the land you decide to take over the land and next take over your owners. and even though you were hired because you were a great fit, your short sightedness, ego and ambition will cloud your judgement even if that was not your original intent.

At that point you will start suffering from what is called Marlow’s Rhetoric of Self.

Now take a look at Cameroon’s president. he has been in office for the past 30 years, that is two hundred and sixty two thousand eight hundred man hours working.

Can an individual rule for that long ? Yes, but can they rule without self rhetoric ? the human nature proves otherwise.

I read a lot of hate comments and tweets from people on the last 30 years of his presidency, they even started a trend #30ansansmourir (30 years without dieing), why people will wish death unto an individual, still boggles me. He is doing his job as president, keeping peace and stability, on the other hand, the economy has been far from prosperous, it never recovered from the ‘92 economic crisis, the unemployment rate is alarming, over 10 million unemployed, and the youth have lost patience, the foundation of any country.

The way out of this will be very excruciatingly painful, challenging and hard ,but I have good news for you. It only gets better from here, a lot of the young people I talk to, are creating businesses, startups, trying to go back to Cameroon, and depending on themselves not the government for their financial success.

Even though some people assume they are prepared for a new president, deep down they are not, research studies shows people hate change, and they are scared of what a new president will do.

Nevertheless I like comparing Paul Biya’s 30 years reign to the evolution of the iPhone, a strong slow repetition of small incremental changes.

Things can change, things will change, things are changing, slowly but surely, painfully but inevitably, Humans were meant to thrive.

Do you have ideas on how we could move forward from here, I’ll love to hear them. why not start a trend #waystomoveforward ?

Cameroon has done it again… this time by winning the Olympics with bad press. As we all know by now, news agencies have reported the defection of 7 Cameroonian athletes, which has been syndicated worldwide, even the washington post is talking about it and while everyone was been quite verbal about their disappointment and shame, some even when forward to launch a petition against granting asylum to those athletes.

Why does bad news spread faster than good, I wonder if the Washington Post ever reported on Cameroon the first country to develop a medical tablet dedicated solely to saving lives. Of course not we live in the era sensational journalism,

Nevertheless the whole time my head kept wondering what will I have done if I was in those athletes shoes.

That is a very easy decision to take, because the answer depends on two things, your background and your perspective on life, you see Cameroon is a 21 million strong country, with a majority of people living under $5 per day (I’m so tired of this world bank statistic) but despite that, Cameroon has observed a steady economic growth of 4.5% since 2012, yet year in, year out there is massive exodus of talent and brain.

My story is quite similar, I left Cameroon 2 years ago to further my education in the states, I would not say, I lived on $5 a day, but like a majority of the youth, I went to college and graduated.

Straight out of it, I decided to work for Night club as their web designer, not because they weren’t better jobs, but getting those better jobs has proven to be a hassle.

You see in Cameroon, though over 11 million people are unemployed, this employment figure doesn’t count the informal sector which employs millions of people like taximen, bike owners, or “buyam sellams”.

Ofcourse I could have applied for a job at the state companies, but tribalism, favoritism, and corruption drive a lot of our companies, who would hire a half anglophone, half bamileke. These are they kind of unfortunately questions companies look at; where are you from ? Who is your father ? What is your last name ? Do you want to sleep with me ? even though I was qualified, getting a formal job was still not possible, now imagine that is the same reality for millions of people who have obtained their bachelors or masters, so all they can do is to sell clothes at Mokolo, that is a funny sad reality.

A better example, is my best friend, who graduated from a state university, gets a scholarship to go study in China, gets his masters, he is back in Cameroon and its been 6 months today, No job.

Due to the powerful nature of the government, a lot of our parents are civil servants, they have worked day in day out to able to send their children through school, no great pays but by some kind of money management technique called “njangi” they were still able to afford.

Because of that I do have a lot of classmates who went straight abroad for studies after high school, these guys do not come from high income families, a lot of them had to borrow huge amounts of money to send their kids abroad, in Cameroon we dont have a “College trust fund”.

Unfortunately once these get abroad they swear never to return. After all why should they return ? Nobody wants to come back and sell clothes !

But the is serious problem with that kind of reasoning, some will argue that what if our parents had followed that same logic we will not be where we are today, but you see our parents lived in a very different era, they were paid to go to school, had full scholarships and their jobs paid off well.

After the 90’s all of that changed…

Nevertheless thinking the is no need to comeback is fundamently flawed, yes patriotism doesnt feed a nation, but hope is really what should keep us moving.

My gig at the night club, put me in position to recognize an opportunity, I got recommended, went for the interview in 2 a piece coat and got the job.

A great job I would say, great perks, great starting salary, great team of people, and I was given a brand new Macbook Pro, a 24/7 home internet connection, even the Presidency of republic did not offer that.

…But well things started going wrong, as with many Cameroonian companies who start off well (Cameroon airlines, Sonel, Snec), a lot don’t survive to retain their talent, in my case my company upfront refused to increase pay package but once they did they added $50 (lol), they were constantly stressing out the employees with undertone racial statements and kept a majority of executive positions for their French counterparts but basically an unproductive work environment for a high-skill job.

I remember once during a Thursday meeting, the CEO told us, the reason he didn’t want to increase salaries was because he felt we did not show the zeal, thus we don’t need it, and how he knew how to manage our money better.

In my head, I said F**k You !!!!

His statement revolted me, but you are in Cameroon, who will you go complain to. This company started to use a very common tactic, they knew the job market was difficult so they capitalized on it, basically they told us, if you didn’t like the pay, you were free to leave. No one left, that says a lot !

So while some people got paid $100 monthly to do exactly what Apple geniuses do, the expatriates got paid $2000 upwards to do nearly nothing (in my opinion).

In clear English, we were being exploited !

Tell me why would any talented young engineer wish to continue to go through that stress.

So I did what I had to do, I decided to look abroad for better opportunities, later on quit ! (so did many others after me) I headed to the US, in the hope of one day getting that a solid background and going back to start my own business.

A lot of other people share similar stories, a lot people I know will never go back Home if things don’t get better.

So here we are ! Stuck with a lot of talent who will prefer to stay abroad because they believe conditions are better, and others who believe working hard in Cameroon will someday pay off.

As an idealist I strongly believe Cameroon will change for the better (thats the reason why I started writing a book), no one lives forever, so with continuous perseverance and hard work, it will take us 1, 2, 5, 10 years, if you take a page from Mandela’s book, he sets a perfect example.

I’m preparing to go to Cameroon to focus on expanding my startup, today the team is 6 people, but I wish to grow and create thousands of jobs and retain the talent, but to be honest with you a part of me is scared.

I could very well stay in the US, get a great job working, for someone like Google, Twitter or Facebook but my perspective of life is different I prefer to go for the unknown rather than be comfortable, I prefer to hope than to live on what others have built. So I really don’t know how this whole thing will go down, the government may decide to crush me with their tax and corrupt system, thus making this decision a great mistake, I don’t know, who knows ? but I have always learnt to trust my guts, optimism and live by my passion.

If only I could inject into those 7 athletes an ounce of my optimism.

An infographic depicting the runout of Cameroon’s 2011 Cabinet reshuffle. Data from Twitter.com #cmr11 , cameroontribune.cm , camer.be and cameroon-info.net

An infographic depicting the runout of Cameroon’s 2011 Presidential Elections. Data from Twitter.com , Jeuneafrique.com

Social Networking is becoming such big trend nowadays, we can see new ones popping everyday, and very lately, a Cameroonian social networking site was launched by  Mambe Churchill and  Papa Qube, called Camerborn, in the effort to answer the needs of the local population which sites likeFacebook, Hi5 and Myspace haven’t, I wouldn’t dare say these sites haven’t radically changed the way we communicate today, but rather what I’m saying is these networks aren’t adapted to the local cultures, Lets see a practical example,Facebook today enables a Cameroonian teenager to chat with his friend from India, see the photos of his girlfriend who lives in Britain and read the status of his brother studying in the US and also its enables him to spend countless hours playing CafeWorld and FrontierVille, But what it doesn’t enable him to do, is to prepare for his upcoming  GCE or BAC examinations, it doesn’t enable him share his homework with his classmate who is in Nkoukolou and also, it doesn’t enable him to find other students like him who have difficulties in Maths and are looking for ways to fix that and people to share that with. Camerborn was created to enable that.  I was greatly privileged to be part of the project, and thus i took upon the task to  redesign the present UI (User Interface) to something more COOL, and I thought it will be easy to do, but little did i know, that designing for the Social Media could be very challenging.

By now you should be aware that Africa hosted for the very first time a memorable event, the FIFA world cup, i can still remember the excitement on the faces of people when it was first announced . But my question remains, why did it take so long for the African continent to host the World  Cup, or better why do we give the impression that Africa isn’t ready to take part in large events, some may say, its due to a lack of infrastructure,  poverty, or corrupt governments and so on and so forth. But after seeing what South Africa offered, today i think as many others, that’s its time Africa shows its self in big style to the rest of the world, let it be in the Arts, Design, Technology or Architecture Field. We need to promote our products and ideas and also show how they are positively affecting our nations and the world.