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 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.