Information Technology: Canada and Korea to help Cameroon improve sector

By Yemti Harry Ndienla

IT (information technology) is a term that encompasses all forms of technology used to create, store, exchange, and use information in its various forms (business data, voice conversations, still images, motion pictures, multimedia presentations, and other forms, including those not yet conceived). It's a convenient term for including both telephony and computer technology in the same word. It is the technology that is driving what has often been called "the information revolution." In the world of globalization, Information system is such where data are collected, classified and put into process interpreting the result thereon in order to provide an integrated series of information for further communicating and analyzing. In a progressively more spirited worldwide atmosphere, Information System plays the role as ‘enabler and facilitator’, which endows with tactical values to the officialdom and considerable step up to the excellence of administration. ‘An Information System is a particular type of work system that uses information technology to detain, put on the air, store, retrieve, manipulate or display information, thereby partisan one or more other work structure’. In totting up to taking sides assessment making, co-ordination and control, information systems may also help managers and workers investigate problems, envisage complex subjects and generate new merchandise or services.
But the system is far less developed in Cameroon. However, the government started a programme for the construction of Multimedia centres in some rural parts of the country, in a bid to bring IT closer to the population. Unfortunately, the programme died a natural death if not in coma. On this score, the government of Cameroon went out for assistance from friendly countries. So far, two (Canada and Korea) pledged to assist the programme. And if things work out well Cameroon’s Information and Communication Technology will in a few years ahead witness a significant transformation
A recent agreements signed between the government of Cameroon, represented by the Minister of State for Posts and Telecommunications, Maigari Bello Bouba and the Mobile Money Cameroon consortium in the present of the Canadian High Commissioner to Cameroon, Jean Pierre Lavoie, is expected to see the construction of some 300 new multimedia centres, across about 20.000 villages in the country's rural areas on or before 2015. The multimedia centres which constitute a veritable tool of development are not only expected to provide about 900 jobs but to facilitate communication and render it cheaper and easier for the rural masses.
On the other hand the government of South Korean is expected to bring in a new security device for carrying electronic business more efficiently and at low cost. The Public Key Infrastructure will therefore be installed and this will necessitate three things: a certification authority, a registration authority and a technical architecture made up of server, computers etc. The certificate to be delivered by the certification authority will be used in signing documents digitally to authentify the emission of documents.