Cameroon hosted the first national debating tournament in French Africa

Buea, the university town sitting on the eastern slopes of Mount Cameroon, the highest mountain in west and central Africa was the host of the maiden edition of the Cameroonian University Debating Championship in August 7-14, 2010 organized by RESID and Cameroon Debate Association. Six teams and four adjudicators from the crème of high institutions in Cameroon (The University of Buea, Yaoundé I, Dschang, Douala, Advance School of Mass Communication and ENTP) converged on the beautiful campus of the University of Buea to experience their first debating Competition.
The inaugural Cameroonian National Universities Debating Championship (CANUDC) is the first national debating event to be hosted in a French African country where educational debating is not well known. The tournament aimed to introduce and institutionalize competitive debating in Cameroon and provide a platform for student across the country to meet and interact. The 5 days event attracted numerous guest and curious from the city of Buea thrilled by the topics and the impressive performance of the participants.
The first two days of the event was fully devoted to training workshops lead by facilitators from DEDERC (Nigeria) and RESID, who took the participants through debating techniques and rules, judging debate, communication skill. Great social activities as well as Video projections including the famous Denzel Washington movie “The Great Debater” were used entertain participants
The competitions were held in the Karl Popper format in which students debated in teams from their own school and were offered to debate in French and English to suit the bilingual nature of Cameroon, however, other debate formats including the parliamentary format were introduced to participants for their preparation for the upcoming WUDC 2011 in Botswana.
The University of Dschang lead by Binyou-Bi Homb Yannick, took advantage of its reputation for having the first debate club in Cameroon and went home with the trophy of the best debating team. They also produced the best debater and best speakers both in French and English. Congratulation also to Liliane Djuekou from the university of Douala and Daniel Ndu from the university of Buea who won respectively the Best female Debater and the Best Judge awards.
Obviously all the participants enjoyed the benefits and excitements of debating and where very enthusiastic in participating in more competitions. The next edition which has been scheduled at the University of Dschang in August 2011 has already revealed signs of large participation as many debate clubs are being created in Cameroonian universities.
The organizing committee expresses many thanks to the University of Buea for providing halls and accommodation for participants, to Jerry Nwigwe (Nigeria) and Justice Molhabani (Botswana) for mentoring the event.

Judging by the success of this maiden edition, the CANUDC is on the right track to becoming the largest and foremost non sportive youth platform in the country as envisioned by the promoters. To achieve this, RESID has sought the involvement of the Ministry of Education to support debate program and also expect the input of international stakeholders especially in the area of capacity building which is highly demanded. Moreover, to respond to the feedback received from other African countries, RESID has expressed the need to extend the debate program to other African French countries and call on the attention of the international debate community to include them in their agenda as they represent the largest communities in Africa.