By Cyril KimbiThe advice “get an internship” assumes a market with structured graduate programmes, published vacancies and an application season. That market is thin in Cameroon, which leaves students concluding that experience is unavailable. It is available — it just has to be found and sometimes created rather than applied for.
Why the usual advice does not transfer
Formal internship programmes exist mainly in large corporates, banks, telecoms and international organisations. They are few, heavily contested, and often filled through networks before anything is advertised.
Meanwhile most employment sits in small and medium enterprises and in the informal sector, which almost never advertise and would not describe what they offer as an “internship”.
So the search strategy that works is inverted. Instead of looking for openings, you identify organisations and approach them with a proposal. That feels presumptuous to most students. It is completely normal to the people receiving it — a small business owner is not offended by a competent young person offering to help with something specific.
The direct approach, done properly
A generic request — “I am looking for an internship in your company” — puts the work of imagining a role onto a busy person, and it is usually ignored for that reason.
A specific proposal is a different document:
“I am a second-year accounting student. I noticed your shop records sales by hand. I can set up a simple spreadsheet that produces a monthly total and a stock list, and train whoever will use it. I would like to do this over three weeks, unpaid, to learn how a real business tracks its numbers.”
That names a problem, proposes a solution, bounds the commitment, and states what you want in return. It is answerable with a yes or a no, which is why it gets answered at all.
Deliver it in person where you can. A printed letter handed over, or a short conversation, outperforms email substantially in a market where email is not the primary channel.
Where to look, in order of realistic yield
- People you already know. Family, church, association, neighbours, your parents’ colleagues. Not favouritism — how most first opportunities happen everywhere.
- Small and medium businesses near you. A pharmacy, a garage, a printing shop, a school, a clinic, a cooperative. Every one has administrative and technical work nobody has time for.
- Your own institution. Departments, laboratories and libraries often need assistance, and a lecturer’s project is real research experience.
- NGOs and associations. Frequently short of hands and generous with responsibility.
- Formal programmes. Apply, but do not build the plan around them.
Making the experience count afterwards
This is where most students lose the value of work they actually did. An entry reading “Intern, three weeks” proves attendance and nothing else.
From day one, keep a short record: what you were asked to do, what you decided, what happened. At the end you should be able to state one problem, your action, and the result — which is exactly the shape a behavioural interview answer takes, and exactly what belongs on a CV.
Compare: “Assisted with accounts” against “Replaced a handwritten sales book with a spreadsheet; the owner now produces a monthly total in ten minutes instead of an afternoon.” Same three weeks. Only one of them is evidence.
Ask for a short written confirmation before you leave, while people remember you. Chasing it six months later rarely works.
Unpaid work: where the line is
Short unpaid placements are common and can be a fair exchange when you are genuinely learning. That exchange stops being fair in recognisable circumstances: when the work is months long and you are doing a job someone would otherwise be paid for, when nobody is teaching you anything, or when the arrangement keeps extending without a defined end.
Protect yourself with three things agreed in advance — a defined length, a defined task, and a named person responsible for you. An arrangement that cannot supply those is unlikely to be worth your time.
Building experience with no employer at all
If nothing lands, experience can still be manufactured, and employers read it perfectly well:
- A real project with a real user. Build the thing, get one person to use it, record what changed.
- Tutoring. Genuine teaching experience, and the easiest to start.
- A small trade or service. Running anything that takes money teaches pricing, customers and cash — which is more than most internships teach.
- Association or class responsibility, if you actually organise rather than hold a title.
- A documented piece of independent work — an analysis, a report, a translation — that someone else read.
None of this requires permission, which is precisely why it is available to everyone reading this.
Frequently asked questions
When should I start looking?
From the first year. Evidence accumulates and cannot be assembled in a final semester.
Is an unpaid internship worth taking?
For a short, bounded placement where you are learning, often yes. For months of unsupervised work replacing a paid role, no.
What if my field has no local employers?
Build the closest adjacent experience and a documented project. Remote and freelance work is also a legitimate route in several fields.
Does it matter if the organisation is small?
Rarely, and small often gives you more responsibility — which produces better material to talk about.
How do I ask without a contact?
In writing, in person, with a specific proposal naming a problem you can help with and a bounded commitment.
