Gender Considerations in the Study of Science and Technology in Anglophone Cameroon

Abstract

When the Germans, who colonised the erstwhile Kamerun after the partition of Africa in 1884, were defeated during the First World War, the League of Nations placed Cameroon under the protectorate of the French and British rule. French- speaking Cameroon gained independence in 1960 and was later joined in 1961 by the English- speaking Cameroon, hereafter known as Francophone and Anglophone Cameroon, respectively. As a consequence, Cameroon's educational system is fashioned along the lines of the French and British systems, which many argue is a reflection of Cameroon's rich cultural diversity. From the nursery through primary to post-secondary school level, the English and French models have respectively existed predominantly in Anglophone and Francophone Cameroon. In 1972, Anglophone Cameroon was cartographically configured into two provinces, the South West and North West, whose population stands at about three million (National Institute of Statistics, 2001). The influence of French and the demographic and geographic superiority of the Francophone Cameroon, with eight provinces and a population according to the National Institute of Statistics (2001) of 12,294,768, have since served as a road map for the course of tertiary education in Cameroon. This has led to a binary system of universities and grandes ecoles or specialised institutions, commonly called professional schools. It is at this level that Anglophone students are faced with a myriad of problems, especially in the study of science and technology subjects in institutions where French is the medium of instruction as most of them are based in Francophone Cameroon