The Director General of Cameroon’s National Agency for Information and Communication Technologies (ANTIC), Ebot Ebot Enaw said the digital transformation of administrations can enable countries like Cameroon to evolve towards a more horizontal model of governance, which relies on data transparency and greater collaboration with civil society in formulation of public policy.

Enaw was speaking at the end of a three-day national forum on digital transformation hosted recently in the capital Yaounde.

He said the ICT industry is the second largest generator of inland-revenue after oil.

“Digital transformation, triggered by ICT, has the ability to help Cameroon remodel its core business processes as well as leapfrog many of her development challenges,” he said. “Digital transformation is no longer just a buzzword. It is essential for companies to build sustainable resilience and agility in this fast-changing world. However, digital transformation is not a quick short-cut, it is a journey of three stages, namely: digitisation, digitalisation, and finally, digital transformation.”

In September 2021, ANTIC carried out a study of 66 government administrations, public and private companies in which it assessed the level of digital transformation across the following indicators: human resources, training, strategic vision, level of documentation and maturity of business processes, level of development of hardware and software infrastructures and digital trust.

The study found that 89% of entities have a master plan or a digital transformation strategy, while 62% have cartography of their processes, of which just 6% are formalised.

Additionally, 52% of organisations claim to have a significant level of automation in place for business processes for staff and 25% for the public.

However, the findings show that a lack of adequate training and human resources remains a major conundrum for the digital transformation of organisations.