# MESSAGE OF THE HEAD OF STATE TO THE YOUTH
Yaounde, 10 February 2009
# My dear young compatriots,
Last year at the same time, I urged you to wake up to the fundamental changes taking place in the world, changes which will shape the 21st century, and I encouraged you to prepare yourselves for them, in order to seize the opportunities that were bound to arise.
I however added that the complexity of the phenomenon made it difficult to analyze its trend and predict its effects.
I did not realize how right I was.
In fact, a few months later, the crisis rocked the global financial system and soon after affected the real economy all over the world.
As I pointed out recently, although we are affected only moderately, it is obvious that we will not be completely spared.
Should we for this reason scale down our development objectives and particularly those concerning our youth?
I do not believe so. Indeed, I think that we should transcend the crisis and prepare ourselves for the recovery which will inevitably follow. For you, dear young compatriots, there is no other way out, I repeat, than to acquire the best possible qualification in order to compete.
To meet such demand for education, the State pursued and accelerated the reform of our educational system.
Regarding basic education, the resources made available to the ministry have increased significantly. The latter is ranked fourth in terms of budgetary allocations. It can also be noticed that enrolment rates in nursery and primary schools are rising sharply thanks notably to free education. Also, 5 525 new teachers were recruited, raising the number of teachers on contract to nearly 25 000. Some 1 458 new classrooms were built during the 2008 financial year.
Pedagogically, the quality of education has been enhanced through, among others, the development of information and communication technology programmes. These efforts have resulted in an increase in the rate of success in graduation examination to about 80% while the school repeater rate has dropped significantly.
It should also be underscored that private education reform has been completed. It is therefore hoped that more opportunities will henceforth be open to promoters of this sector of education.
Concerning secondary education, the remarkable effort already made was pursued. Let us recall that with CFAF 204 billion, this sector of education has the highest State budget allocation.
One of the priorities in this sector was to expand the school map by setting up 155 new schools in all regions, building many classrooms and transforming 46 existing schools in order to increase the number of technical and bilingual high schools.
To improve the educational service quality, 2 000 new teachers from Advanced Teacher Training Colleges were recruited. Ten thousand other teachers benefited from continuing training programmes and 4 000 were inspected. Multimedia resource centres were installed in six new schools while five others voluntarily experimented with the teaching of national languages and cultures.