The Andjeun Digital Library was officially launched on Wednesday, May 6, at Elite Offices, Douala.
This was the product of four years of hard work by Corporate Engineer Gabriel Fopa in collaboration with Professor Chayong. The project seeks to bequeath “an African cultural identity” to young people and transform a generation “psychologically troubled by reckless abandon” through training, reading, and research.
Scholars, partners, students, musicians and poets of African thought gathered for the launch. Dr. Esso Ngome, mathematician and Egyptologist who has authored many books, Chief Mbock, Evelyne Goma, Yves Ekue (online), and Patricia Ndinga all invoked Léopold Sédar Senghor and Cheikh Anta Diop. They demonstrated the “huge inadequacies of colonial and post-colonial education bequeathed to us without the contributions of black civilization and more.” They unanimously condemned this as a “historic travesty of justice,” reinforcing the need for “the rebirth of African cultural capitalization through action.”
Facing the press, Gabriel Fopa, joined by Dr. Ngome, declared: “Culture and tradition should be learnt like any other subject”. Fopa furthered that “culture in any part of the world, including here, is the mirror to spiritual growth through which, he underlined, the spirit of man is transformed knowingly or unknowingly from not only knowing to be and knowing to do, bringing about upgrading of skills, creativity and innovation.” “We wanted a space where knowledge meets identity,” Prof. Chayong noted. “You cannot build a nation if the youth are strangers to their own story,” Fopa added. Local educators called Andjeun “a structural project for Douala’s intellectual future.”
Andjeun targets students, entrepreneurs, and creatives battling apathy, brain drain, and cultural loss. Programs will link digital literacy to practical sectors. The library is expected “to train youths in agriculture, fishing and other agribusinesses, in general.” Workshops will cover coding, market data, e-governance, and oral-history digitization for cocoa/coffee cooperatives.
Open daily at Elite Offices, Andjeun offers annual subscriptions at Fcfa 5,000 and Fcfa 2,500, with free access for under-25s on select programs. Organizers called it “not just a library but a mindset laboratory” placing African thought at the center of innovation. Dominique Atangana, personal representative of the Minister of Youth and Physical Education, remarked: “It’s a real time for the Founder Gabriel Fopa and the Ministry to reinforce their ties to do more for the youth.” He hailed the project as aligned with Cameroon’s 2025–2030 Digital Economy Plan.
Initiated in 2022, Andjeun merges technology with heritage. It houses high-speed internet, tablet labs, coding hubs, and subscriptions to global research databases. The initial collection holds 3,000 to 4,000 e-books, covering African history, STEM, agribusiness, philosophy, plus digitized Cameroonian literature and oral archives. It is designed as “a place for scientific and spiritual researchers” and “a platform where the public is informed of detailed current, past and coming events.”
