On 26 March, IITA Cameroon was happy to welcome Dr Amos NamangaNgongi, Chair of the Board of Trustees (BoT), on an unofficial visit to the IITA Cameroon Station.
One of the goals of his visit was to get an overview of projects implemented by IITA in Cameroon. Dr NamangaNgongi was received by Country Representative, Cargele Masso; Station Administrator, Simila Boubakari; and scientists including Komi Fiaboe and Fotso Apollin.
The meeting was a move towards creating new partnerships and strengthening the relationships with national and international institutions. Some of the activities being carried out by the station were showcased to the BoT Chair. Some recommendations to mobilize existing partners and potential partners around IITA’s missions and research activities were also on the agenda.
During the visit, Dr NamangaNgongi also visited the ongoing ENABLE Youth Program where he met the National Coordinator of the Agricultural Value Chain Development Project (AVCDP), in a capacity building workshop. More importantly, the BoT Chair spent more than an hour with aspiring agripreneurs being trained in the Youth Agri-Business Incubation Center (YABIC) hosted by the station. He arrived when the aspiring agripreneurs were discussing the importance of leadership for agribusiness success and was impressed by the commitment of the interns and their interest in the Program.
“I am very flattered to know that you have accepted to be trained by this Program, which is one of the best investments of IITA. As I have seen, your intellectual level is quite high, but despite that, you have accepted to be trained by ENABLE Youth Cameroon, you have accepted to acquire skills that will help you contribute to Africa’s development by creating jobs for you and other youth,” Dr NamangaNgongi said.During the discussion, the Chair of the Board also drilled the young interns on the importance of agribusiness for the development of Africa, and the key role they can play for the growth of African economies. Also, he emphasized the necessity for all the aspiring agripreneurs to actively contribute to the success of this important initiative, which was initiated back in 2012 by the IITA Director General, Dr Nteranya Sanginga, in Ibadan, Nigeria. Under his leadership, this has now been scaled up across Africa, with support from various partners including the African Development Bank (AfDB).
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