Hold accreditation
Opening and running a private vocational training centre requires administrative accreditation, granted for the pathways explicitly applied for.
MINEFOP, the supervising authority
In Cameroon, vocational training falls under the Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training (MINEFOP). It authorises private bodies to deliver training, organises the certification examinations and maintains the standards for each occupational pathway.
For a private centre such as ours, that translates into three continuing obligations, on which the value of a student’s course depends.
Renew it
Accreditation is not granted once and for all. Renewal requires evidence of premises, teaching equipment and the qualifications of every teacher.
Enter students for examination
Certification is decided by a board against national examination specifications, distinct from any certificate the centre issues itself.
Two documents, two different values. The certificate obtained in the ministry’s examinations attests to a nationally recognised qualification. The certificate issued by Les 3A describes the course followed and the skills covered at the centre. They complement each other; neither replaces the other, and we never present the second as a State qualification.
The social care worker pathway: a framework still to be refined
The pathway exists in the ministry’s examination records. But preparatory work carried out by the training centre in August 2024 surfaced a precise point: the “specialisation” field of those records was empty. The occupation was named, in other words, but the specialisations that make it genuinely employable were not.
Six possible specialisations were examined. Two were retained as priorities given the country’s needs:
- Gerontology and end-of-life care — the direct answer to the ageing of the population.
- Paediatric care — the association’s historic specialisation, inherited from its founder.
Getting these two specialisations registered in the accreditation file is one of the projects explicitly written into the modernisation plan. It is a modest administrative step with decisive effects: it determines how legible the qualification is to employers.
What we undertake to comply with
Beyond educational oversight, several texts govern our activity directly. We list them here because they protect, first and foremost, our students, the workers we place and the people we support.
| Text | What it means for us |
|---|---|
| Law no. 90/053 of 19 December 1990 on freedom of association | Establishes the legal existence of Les 3A and provides that associations administer themselves freely, in accordance with their constitution. |
| Law no. 92/007 of 14 August 1992, Labour Code | Governs the contracts of the workers we place: duration, pay, working conditions. |
| Decree no. 2023/566 setting the guaranteed minimum wage | Sets the statutory floor at 41,875 FCFA per month. Our pay scale deliberately starts above it. |
| Law no. 2024/017 on personal data protection | Classifies health data as sensitive. Compliance deadline of 23 June 2026: data protection officer, register of processing, informed consent. |
| African Union Protocol on the Rights of Older Persons | Ratified by Cameroon in September 2023, in force since 4 November 2024. Gives an international legal basis to the rights our work puts into practice. |
| OHADA Uniform Act on commercial companies and economic interest groupings | Governs the grouping that carries the association’s commercial activities (articles 869 to 885). |
References as identified in the 3A strategic modernisation plan 2026–2031 and its legal annexes. For any administrative step, only the texts published in the Official Gazette are authoritative.
The unfinished business
Social care work is not yet a regulated profession in Cameroon. There is no enforceable job description, no dedicated collective agreement, no qualification requirement to practise. It is precisely that vacuum which permits the 40,000 FCFA pay recorded in 2024.
Advocacy for statutory recognition of the profession is on the agenda for phase 3 of the modernisation plan, alongside the work of standardising our own practice. An association does not make the law; it can build the demonstration that makes law possible.
Name an occupation, define its content, and guarantee its pay: the three conditions for a sector to genuinely exist.