ACIDEL-Cameroon Launched
By Shout-Africa Cameroon correspondent – The Douala-based association will work with government, universities, and civil society to foster attainment of Millennium Development Goals.
Cameroonian lecturers in universities in Cameroon and the USA have taken the commitment to research, identify and come out with a comprehensive list of areas that fall within the Millennium Development Goals still needing more funding proposals.
The university dons revealed that one of the problems Cameroon faces to attain the MDGs, like many other African countries, is that most areas of project funding are still fallow and unexploited. It was also disclosed that more and more proposals for funding were being rejected not because they never met the demands of the funding bodies nor were not good, but because donors were at times frustrated when projects were poorly executed, never provided the required results, projects executed on paper and some executors simply squandered the money at the expense of fighting a local problem.
This happened because Cameroon had no local association acting as a middleman between donors and the project owners, to comment or give an overview of the projects on course, to testify to the authenticity of the project to donors who will not always come to get firsthand view of the actual execution of the project(s) they fund.
In order to close this gap that the lecturers established initiated with the help of the University-Community Partnership for Social Action Research (ASU), the Association for International Cooperation and Local Development (ACIDEL). Officially recognized by the government of Cameroon as an association, the purpose of ACIDEL is to act as a middleman between donors and project.
It will encourage more Cameroonians not only to draw projects to suit the guidelines of international funding organizations, but also make an overview of the proposals and assist to send them to organizations throughout the world for funding. Speaking during a news conference to launch the association in Akwa, Douala, recently, Osee Romeo Tcheupgoum, Pioneer Regional Coordinator of ACIDEL-Cameroon and lecturer at Arizona State University, said it focuses on projects that essentially fall within the MDGs, with the goal to foster Cameroon’s attainment by 2015.
With the strong assistance of the US-based University-Community Partnership for Social Action Research (ASU), ACIDEL will first research into fallow areas for funding, train youths to set up projects in these areas and help forward funding applications to ASU who will then submit to funding bodies. Bepyassi Ouafo Vicaire, lecturer of The University of Douala, explained “Projects are going on in Cameroon but a large number of them are unknown by government, organizations, or research institutions who are main actors. Funding bodies find it difficult to assess the effectiveness of their funded projects are so are reluctant to continue funding projects in the country.”
