Buea, the Capital of the South West Region has come to be known as the Silicon Mountain. It is the capital of technology in Cameroon and fast growing as the headquarters of technology in East and West Africa. Recently, the BBC did a documentary where they showcase the prowess of Cameroons technological City called Buea. On Saturday, 18th June, technology giants from various start-up companies in Buea and its environ converged in Buea for its second edition of the annual conference. BaretaNews was told, these technology giants brought together over 600 persons in and from the diaspora.

The theme of the conference was ” Think Global, Build Local”. This event brought together techies, university dons, and financial gurus. BaretaNews is informed that a video of tech growth in Cameroon graced the opening ceremony. It gave an insight on how the tech community in Cameroon has grown not just within the country or continent but also across continents without leaving out media bodies like B.B.C. The Silicon Mountain as it has come to be known made it known during the conference that in no distant future, the Cameroons will top the list of high tech in Africa and why not the world.

So many participants graced the events amongst which were great IT personnel from within and without the nation, with a flow of different tech perspectives, it could be possible to develop a single and consistent view of tech in the Cameroons and world at large.

Speakers upon speakers elaborated on topics such as designing, raising capital for tech project, thinking global to build local, video animation for startups, machine learning, understanding the Cameroon user, Programming, Coding secret etc. One of the hallmarks that went noticed was that most presenters were students including various tech companies with the youngest presenter being a 17-year-old high school student who presented on coding. This development is huge for the Cameroons future. BaretaNews commend this. It is our expectation that Cameroon will emerge before the so-called government emergence in 2035 by these cream of tech giants.

 

It is, therefore, indicative that from the various presentations, the tech world in the Cameroons portrayed their potentials to the entire world by depicting their capabilities to build technology locally and compete with other great tech companies like silicon valley in California U.S.A etc. Thus, the conference came to digitize the “android generation” more by making young Cameroonians and Africans realise their potentials in the digital world.