Contribution to the development of skills and technical training structures at the Mbalmayo School of forestry (Central Province)

Cameroon

The project is upgrading existing school facilities such as the library, the arboretum and the wood workshop, and establishes new facilities such as an herbarium and a research unit on silviculture, wood technology and forest genetics. The project further provides training abroad for the school teachers in wood technology, trade and marketing. Under the framework of the institutional assessment of the forestry sector being carried out by the Government, the project is also expected to formulate a master plan for training and retraining for the Mbalmayo National Forestry School.

During the period under review all administrative bottlenecks encountered by the project at its start were removed, in particular, the Director of the Forestry School has been confirmed as the Project Director and the counterpart contribution has been secured. The project has therefore made steady progress: project support staff has been recruited, office equipment has been acquired, 6 lecture rooms have been rehabilitated as well as the herbarium, a 2-km path has been established in the school forest reserve for the purpose of training in species identification, dendrology and phenology, activities related to the rehabilitation of the arboretum have been initiated with the inventory of the species available in the arboretum, the definition and design of the area for its extension and the establishment of nursery of the species that will be transplanted into the arboretum. The terms of reference of the consultants to be engaged for the development of the forestry training master plan and for training the school instructors in certain specific aspects of forestry have been developed and the consultants have been selected and are expected to undertake the study soon. The identification of the woodworking equipment for the rehabilitation of the wood training workshop has been completed, some of which have been bought and are being installed.

Although started with some delays, the implementation of the project activities seems now to be satisfactory. A Project Steering Committee Meeting took place in June 2005 and reviewed implementation progress and found that the project is on track and its activities are well implemented. Because of these initial delays, an extension of the duration of the project until June 2005 was approved. The project will have a wide variety of useful outputs. In order to enhance the implementation of the remaining activities of the project an extension of the project without additional funding, was approved at the last PSC meeting.

November 2011

The Executing Agency has submitted completion report in August 2011, and at that time the ITTO Secretariat was awaiting additional information in order to complete the final audit report.

December 2010

The ITTO Secretariat reported to CRF that in spite of the delayed implementation, all outputs have been achieved as follows:

• The project upgraded the existing school facilities such as the library, the arboretum, the wood workshop, the students' cafeteria, and established new facilities such as a herbarium and a research unit on silviculture, wood technology and forest genetics.
• The project provided training abroad for the school teachers in wood technology, trade and marketing.
• Under the framework of the institutional assessment of the forestry sector carried out by the Government, the project also formulated and validated a master plan for the Mbalmayo National Forestry School, which was approved on June 2009.
• The project also developed a proposal for a second phase, which was submitted for appraisal of the 36th ITTO Expert Panel for the Technical Appraisal of Projects Proposals in September 2008, named "Contribution to the development of skills and technical training structures at the Mbalmayo School of Forestry", which received category 2.

The Secretariat also reported to CRF that in spite of these achievements, the Executing Agency failed to submit the Completion Report and the Final Financial Audit to ITTO. The CRF urged Government of Cameroon to intervene with the EA in order to finalize and deliver the pending reports.

November 2009

The ITTO Secretariat reported to the joint Committees CEM/CFI on the progress of this project as of November 2009. The Secretariat also notified the Committees that the executing agency had failed to submit annual financial audits and that during the year of 2009, a planned PSC meeting had not been scheduled by the executing agency. During the reported period the counterpart funds for the year 2008 were released in 2009 by the Ministry of Finances, allowing the implementation of the following remaining activities for the completion of the project:

• The validation of the Master Plan, which was posted by the Ministry of Forestry and Fauna on 14 April 2009, and approved by the Ministry on 6 June 2009;
• Purchase of GPS equipment and equipment for the laboratory of topography and the herbarium; and
• During August 2009 a total of 82 technicians graduated from the Faculty of Forestry.

Other pending improvements to the facilities include water supply, students' dormitory and toilets. The project also developed a proposal for a second phase, which was submitted for appraisal of the 36th ITTO Expert Panel for the Technical Appraisal of Projects Proposals, named "Contribution to the development of skills and technical training structures at the Mbalmayo School of Forestry". The last disbursement was in August 2006. The project has faced delays in implementation of activities, mainly due to delays in the disbursement of funds for the counterpart contribution. For the year 2009 no Steering Committee Meeting has been scheduled due to the lack of confirmation from the Executing Agency, and no Annual Financial Audit has been received by the ITTO Secretariat.

The delegate of Cameroon informed the Committees that in spite of the delay in the disbursements of the counterpart contribution, the implementation of the project had achieved outputs and that the Government of Cameroon will follow-up in order to bring the project to completion.

The delegate of Switzerland expressed that when visiting the project site, he had observed good results in implementation of the project. He also pointed out that the ITTO Mission to Cameroon had observed the problems of lack of equipment and motivation of the staff at the Forestry School, and he expressed his concern that a second phase project proposal has been submitted to ITTO without completion of the current project, and without an assessment or midterm evaluation of the current situation. The delegate of Japan supported the comments of the delegate from Switzerland. He noted that no funds for a mid-term evaluation are available. After consultations with the donors, the Secretariat will monitor completion of the project at a scheduled Project Steering Committee meeting in 2010.

November 2008

In their November 2008 session, the Committees on Forest Industry and on Economic Information and Market Intelligence were informed by the ITTO Secretariat that the executing agency has just submitted the final progress report together with a project proposal for a second phase that had been evaluated by the Expert Panel for Technical Appraisal of Projects and Pre projects proposals. The Secretariat indicated that the executing agency had requested an extension until 31 December 2008, for the conduct of the final financial audit. The delegation of Cameroon confirmed that the oral report given was correct, and that counterpart funds had been made available to the executing agency in order to submit the final financial audit to the Secretariat by the end of December 2008.

November 2007

The Fifth Project Technical Committee Meeting took place in Yaoundé on 1st December 2006. Dr. Madi Ali, Secretary-General - Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife, chaired this meeting. The major conclusions of this meeting include: progress made by the project to achieve the specific objective 1 was significantly important: most of the planned activities have been completed; some activities related to the second specific objective of the project would not be completed at the scheduled completion date of the project; a forestry training master Plan for the School of Forestry was developed. It remains to approve the master plan and to formulate a second phase of the project on the basis of an evaluation of the project results. The project will be reported as completed at the next session of the Committee.

November 2006

The project is upgrading existing school facilities such as the library, the arboretum and the wood workshop, and establishes new facilities such as an herbarium and a research unit on silviculture, wood technology and forest genetics. The project further provides training abroad for the school teachers in wood technology, trade and marketing. Under the framework of the institutional assessment of the forestry sector being carried out by the Government, the project is also expected to formulate a master plan for training and retraining for the Mbalmayo National Forestry School.

During the period under review all administrative bottlenecks encountered by the project at its start were removed, in particular, the Director of the Forestry School has been confirmed as the Project Director and the counterpart contribution has been secured. The project has therefore made steady progress: project support staff has been recruited, office equipment has been acquired, 6 lecture rooms have been rehabilitated as well as the herbarium, a 2-km path has been established in the school forest reserve for the purpose of training in species identification, dendrology and phenology, activities related to the rehabilitation of the arboretum have been initiated with the inventory of the species available in the arboretum, the definition and design of the area for its extension and the establishment of nursery of the species that will be transplanted into the arboretum. The terms of reference of the consultants to be engaged for the development of the forestry training master plan and for training the school instructors in certain specific aspects of forestry have been developed and the consultants have been selected and are expected to undertake the study soon. The identification of the woodworking equipment for the rehabilitation of the wood training workshop has been completed, some of which have been bought and are being installed.

Although started with some delays, the implementation of the project activities seems now to be satisfactory. A Project Steering Committee Meeting took place in June 2005 and reviewed implementation progress and found that the project is on track and its activities are well implemented. Because of these initial delays, an extension of the duration of the project until June 2005 was approved. The project will have a wide variety of useful outputs. In order to enhance the implementation of the remaining activities of the project an extension of the project without additional funding, was approved at the last PSC meeting.