Formal education is a farce for blind and visually impaired people in Cameroon

In 2016 when I enrolled in university to study journalism and mass communication, my very first class ended on a very poor note. The lecturer told me that journalism, my program of choice, was not for blind people like me and that I was the first blind student in the almost three decade history of the university. He went ahead to say that my decision to study was a “mere waste of time” and that I was coming to be a “burden to people’s children.” 

I have been aware of how difficult it is for blind and visually impaired people to get a formal education for most of my life. Some of this was due to the narrative government officials created that providing accessible education for people with visual disabilities is a waste of resources. Most of it, however, was that while in school in Cameroon myself, I would come to experience this firsthand. 

Everyone who goes to university hopes to create a fruitful future for themselves. Due to the government’s failure, many blind and visually impaired people (PVIs) in Cameroon cannot obtain this future. Blind people in Cameroon are treated as objects of charity that depend on donations for survival. We are stigmatized and told we have nothing good to offer the country.

Things have improved in present times, though. Many of us pride ourselves on having degrees at various levels of tertiary education. However, despite these degrees, many remain unemployed due to negative societal perceptions. 

Unfortunately, there is limited data on the unemployment rate of visually impaired people. However, given that the National Institute of Statistics, Cameroon (NIS-CM) has previously reported that 31% of people with disabilities are unemployed, we can make reasonable assumptions about the unemployment rate of visually impaired people. This is compared to Cameroon’s 3.87% unemployment rate in 2021. 

In addition, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has extensively reported the barriers people with disabilities experience in entering the labour market. 

The ILO has identified education as one of the most prominent barriers. Persons with disabilities are twice as likely as those without disabilities to have less than a basic education level. They are also half as likely to have a university education. This has a significant impact on their subsequent labour market outcomes, since employment rates for both persons with disabilities and those without increase with the level of education. One of the main factors that would improve job opportunities for people with disabilities, and subsequently PVIs, is the improvement of access to higher qualifications like university degrees.

Finding data on the challenges experienced by PVIs in Cameroon is an impossible task. Globally, the World Health Organization places the number of people with visual impairments at 284 million and the number of blind people at 39 million. In Cameroon, it is difficult to get accurate information on the exact number of PVIs. Recent estimates place the population of PVIs at 600 000 people. There is no accurate data, but data trends show one thing: PVIs in Cameroon experience a large amount of discrimination, especially in the education system.

Only a few people with visual impairments end up acquiring a university education. Tertiary education in Cameroon is plagued by many of the same barriers to accessibility as experienced by PVIs globally. These barriers include inaccessible libraries, high tuition fees, the financial burden of privately acquiring assistive devices, inadequate braille transcribers and lack of assistive devices such as screen readers.

I experienced these barriers while at university. I never had access to the university library due to the library being designed for non-visually impaired students. Like many other visually impaired students, I had to devise other means to succeed. A large part of this relied on a supportive community of fellow students. This process was incredibly tedious, and being ignored by my government upon graduation made the process challenging to comprehend.

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Another incident, which has been burned into my memory, was when two blind journalists were denied recruitment into the state-owned broadcasting company Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV). They had emerged victorious in a competitive entrance exam launched by the Ministry of Public Service and Administrative Reforms in 2021 but were denied the jobs. 

These conditions created a boiling pot of tension that exploded at June’s end. Dozens of disgruntled graduates with visual disabilities flooded the streets of Cameroon’s capital Yaounde to voice their grievances. This protest was met with stiff resistance from the police. At least 25 protestors were apprehended, several others were injured, and the police broke many white canes. The protestors committed no crimes, yet the Cameroon government branded the protestors as criminals. 

We struggle through a daunting academic process, plagued by several barriers to success, to get our degrees, but are turned into beggars upon graduation by our government. Our government would instead break our bodies than work with us to improve the living conditions of visually impaired people in Cameroon. The government of Cameroon, much like other African governments, lacks the will to address the concerns of graduates with visual impairment. 

We are no longer objects of charity without any skills to provide for our communities. We are graduates who want to use our skills to build a better future for all Cameroonians. No one chooses to be blind – the government needs to stop discarding our concerns to the side. We have voices, and we deserve to be heard.

Edited by Cassandra Roxburgh, Uzoma Ihejirika, and Caleb Okereke.