Stakeholders Conference and Consultative meeting for Good Governance with Technologies

STAKEHOLDERS CONFERENCE AND CONSULTATIVE MEETING FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE WITH ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES is an ongoing initiative in partnership with the Embassy of the United States of America in Cameroon to mobilize and engage the government, its department and line ministries concerned, as well as partners in development and the international community. This has as a goal to “Introduce, deliberate and adopt an innovative form of governance with ICT and propose to the government to implement alongside its Decentralization plans, so as to fight6 against corruption, enhance transparency, accountability and good governance”.

Activities to mark the success of our project Stakeholders Conference and Consultative Meetings started on the 5^th of November 2019 with a planning meeting involving I-GLOBE and Partners such as Trading Ventures, EIL-CAM, and FYCB Cameroon. The meeting was to map out the plan for mobilization of councils and stakeholders ahead of the upcoming Stakeholders Conference and Consultative Meeting which was scheduled to take place on the 27^th of April 2020.

The Meeting ended up with mapping out of 338 councils to approach for mobilization exercise which set the following milestones:

1. Deliver mobilization letters to 338 councils stating the vision, mission, and goal of the project as well as the benefit of their active participation in the project
2. Have physical discussions with the Mayors and/or council’s representatives to brief them about the project’s mission and goals as well as the upcoming Stakeholders Conference and Consultative meetings of which they have to be highly represented
3. Build a contact database of emails, phone numbers and contact persons of all the councils for subsequent updates and communication about the conference

The Activities were shared amongst the 55 Volunteers coordinated by various organizations as follows:

• I-GLOBE: coordinated the mobilization of 133 councils in Centre, littoral and South Regions, constituting 35% of the entire exercise
• Trading Ventures: Trading ventures on the other side coordinated 78 councils in the Far North, Northern, and Adamaoua Regions, constituting 21% of the mobilization exercise
• EIL-CAM: coordinated 94 councils in the western and eastern regions of Cameroon constituting 25% of the
• FYCB Cameroon: coordinated 72 councils in the northwest and southwest regions of Cameroon, constituting 19% of the task to be done

While our field activities were ongoing, our continues lobbying of the Government, its line ministries and some top officials, through our relentless effort in advocating for the implementation of E-Governance infrastructure in Cameroon got its first attention at the level of the Prime Minister’s office, who summoned 3 ministries MINPOSTEL, MINDDEVEL and ANTIC in a consultative meeting for us to present to them the concept of E-governance and its Best practices.

The results of that meeting led to an official invitation to I-GLOBE from the Minister of Post and Telecommunication (MINPOSTEL) to attend another consultative meeting to deliberate on the E-Governance Master plan and its vision at the ministry’s conference center, hosted by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunication on the 6^th of January 2020.

As activities progress in the field with local councils during sensitization, we realized the need for conceiving and developing the idea of the Digital Birth Certificates with a centralized Database connecting all local councils together as the foundation of E-GOVERNANCE. This falls in line with the Cameroon E-governance Master plan that was presented to partners and stakeholders during the meeting at MINPOSTEL. The concept is under development and we are hoping to digitize the CIVIL STATUS REGISTRATION SYSTEM for Cameroon connecting all local councils.

The idea and the concept were highly welcomed and appreciated by one of the most prominent partners to local council PNDP in during our second consultative meeting in their conference hallmarking our second approach to stakeholders on issues of E-GOVERNANCE in Cameroon.

The Activities that mark the completion of the first quarter of the STAKEHOLDERS CONFERENCE AND CONSULTATIVE MEETING FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE WITH ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES project run for 3months 10 days beginning from the 21^st of November 2019 to 31^st of January 2020, and saw the participation of 4 organizations and 55 members from these organizations who functions as project mobilization team/volunteers, most of which are engaged from various municipalities where the mobilization took place.