Our Mission

Every month of June, parents like children rejoice because the academic year they were in is finished and they can finally rest a little from all the stress it came with. But generally, that only lasts two months because by the end of July, parents especially are back into that stress. And the most stressful usually being paying the registration and first installment fees of their children, and of course, the textbooks!

Hopefully, one day, CTBN will provide a solution for the former (registration and fees), but for now CTBN offers a solution for the latter; the textbooks!

How it usually goes

Parents will receive a book list from the school of their child and they will have to get the books from a “supplier”. By supplier, we mean any entity which could be a bookstore, a textbook publisher or our infamous “poteau” (individuals that have used textbooks that are still valid as per the curriculum), that has one or all of the textbooks the parent needs.

Everything should go on smoothly from here, at least, that is how it would normally go but that is not how things are. The major question parents usually ask themselves is, “where can I find all these textbooks without wasting a lot of energy, time, and especially money?” Up until now, there was no answer for this question and parents had to move around, day after day, spending valuable energy that could be used elsewhere productively, wasting time that could be used appropriately elsewhere, and spending money on taxies, going from one neighborhood to the other trying to find out if the bookstores in the area have at least some of the textbooks they need.

The solution

CTBN, which stands for Cameroon Textbook Network, was created to solve this problem. It brings together suppliers, and parents, also known as “customers” on CTBN, in one place so that parents no longer have to spend enormous amounts of energy, time and money in finding and acquiring textbooks for their children each academic year. CTBN does not only benefit customers, but also suppliers who usually end up with textbooks on their shelves while some children go to school without textbooks. These textbooks could have been sold if they had more visibility.

The goal of CTBN

We hope that publishers, bookstores, individuals (a.k.a le poteau), and parents, or in CTBN terminology, suppliers and customers, will join the CTBN platform in order to enable children who go to school in Cameroon to have their textbooks on time, and to enable parents to use their energy, time and money more effectively during these periods. If you would like to know how the CTBN works, please refer to our documentation for everything you need to know about using CTBN.

Altogether let us move towards a simpler Cameroon, where our energy, time and money are used to make our lives easier, not harder.

About the CTBN Creator

My name is BRIAN MBUNWE CHUYE, son to MR CHUYE EVARISTUS NFOR and, MADAM TUEKAM VICTORINE SOLANGE epse CHUYE. I am currently 29 years old and a holder of a bachelors degree in Information Systems and Networking (ISN) since 2023 from The ICT University in Zoatopsi Messassi Yaounde in the Center region.

Email: brian.chuye@ctbn.org

Education

I went through the Anglophone system of Education in Cameroon, from pre-nursery to Uppersixth here in Yaounde, following the science category of education from Form 4. After Uppersixth, I wrote 2 concours; CUSS and PUBLIC WORKS in 2015. While waiting on the results, I enrolled in NGOA-EKELE university and started my university journey. When the CUSS results were published, I wasn't among those that passed, but I was on the waiting list. So I continued my journey in NGOA-EKELE university until the results of PUBLIC WORKS were published and I passed.

Following my win in the PUBLIC WORKS concour, I ended my journey at the NGOA-EKELE university and continued at ENSTP late 2015. I spent 3 years at the school before finally dropping out in 2018 while in level 2. I passed level 1 quiet easily (2015-2016) but failed level 2 twice (2016-2017 and 2017-2018). I always loved Information Technology (IT) since I was a kid. All those that knew me can tell you that but being in Cameroon almost always leads you into a concour after high-school and so, that is what I did.

But when something happens, you should know that you had something to do with it, even if it is implicit. Towards the end of level 1, we had a course called Numerical Analysis with Professor Guissepe Fada, an Italian Professor. That course was amazing, not just because of the fact that the professor mastered his topic, the mathematics, logic etc, but in great part because we had to use a lot of programming tools like MATLAB, programming languages like FORTRAN etc. That re-ignited something in me and during the summer holidays, all I did was IT. It was so pervasive that I brought it into my level 2 journey, trying to do both school and personal projects. I am not trying to justify why I failed but rather trying to make you realize that I acknowledge the fact I took part in my own failure at ENSTP.

After that, I took a sabbathical year (from 2018 to 2019) in which I solidified my knowledge base about IT in general, but especially computer systems, networking and web application development. During this year I equally helped my mother in her women's clothes and hair business (ETS TUEKAM). During the summer holidays of 2019, my parents told me it would be good if I had at least a bachelors degree even if I was doing IT stuff aside. So I enrolled at the ICT University in Fall 2019 from which I graduated in 2023 with a GPA of 3.54.

The IT Job Market

After this, I always had a freelancing mindset although I did try to get a job intensively from 2023 to 2024. Of course I did not stop building projects during this time. In 2023, for those who ever saw the ADS on Facebook, Instagram, and those to whom I personally distributed flyers in most parts of Yaounde, I had developed the web application PRANTIX (it was found at https://www.prantix.com, and I created my Facebook account, the1stenhancer, and a page for PRANTIX) that was a CYBERSECURITY-related application that not only educated users about the cyberspace (the internet, social media, mobile networks, MoMo, OM etc), their threats and risks, but also gave them the possibility of uploading any scamming messages (SMS, Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram etc), voice calls, images etc to the web application so that all Cameroonians could visit the platform from time to time and see recent methods used by scammers to steal personal information, money etc in Cameroon. The project was discontinued in 2024 due to lack of interest from the Cameroonian population (or perhaps a bad marketing strategy?) and of financial support.

After PRANTIX, I went on to create many other projects, both for the Cameroonian population as a whole, and for some organizations that accepted my services. The last one being EISERVI that you can find at https://eiservilibrary.org which I created after the summer holidays of 2024. I have to say that the job market hasn't been good, and especially in Cameroon. When you find an opening in the field of IT, you are not treated well (your advice based on your technical know-how is not taken into consideration, you are not well paid for the amount of work you must put in etc) unless the people you work for know and understand what it means to do IT.

So in 2025, I am out with a new web application, the Cameroon Textbook Network. I thought critically about most of the projects I did here in Cameroon and tried to identify why they were not being used by my brothers and sisters in Cameroon and I have this to say (please, feel free to write me if you think what I am saying is off):

• Most of the problems I was trying to solve are global problems not specific to Cameroon, and until proven otherwise, Cameroonians do not seem to trust their own when it comes to IT. I realized that the determining factor that makes many IT jobs in Cameroon unsafe technically, morally and especially financially for Cameroonian IT gurus is that the companies offering does jobs here do not solve problems specific to Cameroon, they solve global problems, most of which do not affect Cameroon in a major way yet, leaving a gigantic pool of unsolved problems which are specific to Cameroon. Cameroon is still a third-world country and there are a lot of facilities in the primary and secondary sectors that we lack, which are the backbone of any nation and the foundation for the tertiary sector in which falls IT. Cameroon is not completely deprived of such facilities as the current state of things enables some tertiary facilities like mobile and web applications, IoT etc to be used to make Cameroonian lives simpler and more effective thereby generating enough capital that can, and should be reinvested in the primary and secondary sectors to boost the economy. I usually say this and I will continue saying it, "if all the nations in the world were to lock their borders and depend solely on themselves for a certain number of years, Cameroon will be the only nation that will not suffer hunger, thirst, and many other problems. We have everything a nation could wish for, and yet, we suffer the most."

Conclusion

There is a paradox in Cameroon which is that when an innovation is brought to light, Cameroonians would rather not use the innovation, or at least try it if they do not know the person or group of people that created the innovation. This is the right mindset to have but, when they do know the person or group of people that created the innovation, they still decide not to use it. I have thought critically about this too and have found 2 major reasons for this which are (again, feel free to write me if you think what I am saying is off):

• We are not completely united. In Cameroon, for reasons I do not understand, people are more attached to their ethnic group or tribe, than to the nation. Some even push that a little further and are more attached to foreign countries than to their own nation. Our ethnic group, our tribe, is important and nobody will ever say the contrary, and maintaining a good relationship with foreign countries is equally beneficial to the nation, but many are forgetting that outside, we will ever only be viewed as 1. It does us no good to fight among ourselves. It only destroys the nation bit by bit and if we (and by we, I mean everybody, from the poor to the rich, from the privileged to the under-privileged etc) do not embrace each and everyone as brothers and sisters, no matter where they come from in Cameroon, I believe no government, bad or good, lazy or hardworking, old or young, will ever be able to serve and make Cameroon great again. Many will say that I, specifically, cannot understand this, but you really do not need to live something before it can touch your soul. Some have eyes, others ears, a working brain, we can feel, we have a mind, a soul and so all you need in my humble opinion is a minimum amount of empathy and love for your neighbor.
• Many of those whose innovations were accepted and used didn't reinvest in Cameroon and its people. I do not think I should elaborate on this because I feel like everyone can, not only understand, but equally see it every single day. Many people do not think about this anymore but the truth is that "the government is chosen by the nation to serve the nation, and they must encourage the nation to serve the nation."

If you love your brothers and sisters, then you love the nation. If you love the nation, it will be your priority in all the decisions you have to make, and building it into the most united, peaceful, stable, hardworking, disciplined, strong, rich, happy and prosperous nation ever will be your vision, a vision you will want to pass down as a legacy from generation to generation. And in all, we, human beings are 1. It was, it is and it will always be the case. No matter what you say, no matter what you think or do, we are 1. So we should start acting like it.