In the media

An awareness campaign against widespread corruption in universities, which includes bribery by students to get good results, false diplomas and sex to gain promotion, has been launched by CONAC, the national anti-corruption commission. According to a source “The main kind of corruption here is the sale of grades by certain teachers. Students whose work is bad get teachers or education officials to improve their grades”. CONAC found instances of nepotism, counterfeiting of results, false diplomas, promotions in return for sex, and abuse of power.

400 cases of fraud had been recorded in the examination conducted by the Ministry of Education for the recruitment of primary school teachers in the public service. The unsuccessful candidates accused the Recruitment Commission of allegedly failing to meet the age and grade criteria for the required qualification, the Certificate of Teaching Skills for Nursery and Primary School Teachers. 21-year-old candidates who were supposed to have obtained the certificate at the age of 15 were selected, whereas the civil service only recruits people aged 32 at the most.

Cameroon’s Minister of Higher Education revealed that the private American University in Central Africa, recruiting students for its programmes is a clandestine university. In 2020, the Minister ordered the African Regional Training Centre for Labour Administration, the Pan African Institute for Development and the Bamenda University Institute of Science and Technology to desist from awarding Bachelor’s degrees and suspend all Master's and Doctorate programmes for non-compliance with the conditions of the accreditation granted to them.