History & Founding Belief

An important watershed of southwestern Cameroon with a mild almost Mediterranean climate and rich volcanic soils, Moungo Division has attracted economic development since colonial times in spite of its distance from the sea (about 150 miles). Successive colonial administrations and religious organizations that invested in Cameroon all had pilots in Nkongsamba, capital of Moungo Division.

Nkongsamba quickly became the third city of Cameroon after Yaoundé, the political capital, and Douala, the economic center of the country. The Moungo Division’s vibrant and burgeoning agriculture churned out coffee, bananas and other tropical fruits for the export market while the rest of the country was assured of supplies of corn, sweet potatoes, cassava, plantains and other staples. This region was so important that the government initiated its first north-south railway line to pass through Nkongsamba, to take vital food necessities to the almost arid north.

As a result of its natural endowments and hard-working populations and with a growing flow of immigrants from other regions, Nkongsamba developed into a vibrant education hub with schools popping up all over, championed by religious organizations and others.

In the mid-1960s into the 1970s however, Nkongsamba began to lose steam as it took on more responsibilities in Cameroon’s struggles for political independence, much to the dislike of those is Yaoundé. Slowly but steadily, Nkongsamba became a ghost town as people fled from the heavy hand of the military that became the rule in Nkongsamba. Industries and farms were abandoned. Roads and other infrastructure fell into disrepair. Today, Nkongsamba and the Moungo Division are a pale reflection of what they used to be as people attempt to rekindle life in a desolate area that is still rich in potential.

As this past passes on to the present and looms on to the future, the smiles on the faces of the innocent, tattered and abandoned youth as they struggle with a destiny that they do not understand and did not create are a call to service, a call to our collective conscience to do whatever we can to utilize the rich endowments of our region to improve the life of its population.