Why Young Cameroonian Men Struggle to Find Mentors

I was listening to a conversation on mentorship on MenTality with Ebuka, and one line stayed with me: someone said he had stopped looking for mentors who only show you their garage. He wanted the ones who would show you their mistakes.

That sounds simple, but it is almost the whole problem.

In Cameroon, and maybe in many African countries, we see the garage. We see the car, the house, the title, the office, the wedding pictures, the imported suit, the big man at the high table. What we rarely see is the process. The debt. The wrong decisions. The years of confusion. The people who helped. The shame. The moment the person almost gave up.

So a young man grows up seeing results without the road that produced them.

Then we ask why he is impatient.

I do not think young Cameroonian men lack mentors because there are no older men around. There are older men everywhere. Fathers, uncles, pastors, bosses, lecturers, elder brothers, coaches, landlords, quarter heads, entrepreneurs, civil servants, engineers, drivers, mechanics, traders, politicians, artists.

The issue is that mentorship is not structured. It is not named. It is not easy to access. And many times, the people who could guide us are also still trying to survive quietly.

Most of Us Were Mentored by Proximity

When I think of mentorship in Cameroon, I do not first think of formal programs. I think of proximity.

The elder brother who showed you how to talk to people. The uncle who helped you write your first CV. The neighbor who let you sit in his shop and watch how he handled customers. The older guy in church who seemed calm when everyone else was loud. The boss who did not just pay you but explained why your work was weak.

Some of us got that. Many did not.

And even when we got it, we did not always know it was mentorship. We just knew there was one person around who seemed to understand life a little better than us.

That is useful, but it is also unfair. Because if your family, church, school, workplace, or neighborhood did not place the right person near you, you were left to guess.

This is why mentorship becomes a class thing without anyone saying it. Some people are born near good examples. Some people are born near chaos and are expected to become wise from it (a few minutes to think of what people are learning in bamenda, sigh)

The Economy Makes Everything Harder

We also have to be honest about the country we are living in.

The World Bank says young people aged 18 to 35 make up 57% of Cameroon's labor force, but many struggle to find work. The same piece talks about programs trying to support young entrepreneurs and unemployed urban youth, which tells you the gap is not small.

The National Institute of Statistics reported that 86.6% of jobs are in the informal sector. That means a lot of people are working, yes, but working without the kind of stable structure that makes mentorship easier. No clear career ladder. No HR path. No senior manager assigned to guide you. No alumni system. No predictable training plan.

You enter the job market and the job market itself is improvising.

So the older man who could mentor you may be selling, hustling, negotiating, chasing payments, avoiding tax trouble, trying to pay school fees, and hiding his own fear from his family. He may have wisdom, but no space to turn it into guidance.

That does not excuse everything. But it explains something.

Mentorship needs time. Time to observe. Time to talk. Time to ask foolish questions without being mocked. Time to make mistakes in front of someone who will correct you before the world punishes you.

Survival does not give people that time easily.

Money Became the Loudest Mentor

When life is tight, money becomes louder than character.

The World Bank's Cameroon overview says poverty reduction has stagnated and that about 4 in 10 Cameroonians live below the national poverty line. When that is the atmosphere, people do not only admire money. They start treating money as proof.

Proof that you are smart.

Proof that you are blessed.

Proof that you are a man.

Proof that people should listen when you talk.

This connects to something I wrote before in Your Worth Is Not Your Wallet. Many of us know, in theory, that a man's value should not be reduced to what he earns. But in real life, when the wallet is light, the shame is real.

That shame makes bad mentorship attractive.

If the only visible man is the man who has money, we will follow him before asking what kind of person he is. If the only story we hear is "I was broke and now I am rich," we may stop caring about what happened in the middle. If society claps for results without asking about the process, young men will learn the lesson.

They are not stupid. They are watching what we reward.

The Internet Is Filling the Empty Seat

Another thing has changed. The empty seat is no longer empty.

If a young man does not have a father figure, elder brother, teacher, or boss he trusts, the internet will offer him one. Sometimes that is good. Sometimes it is dangerous.

Cameroon is not as connected as people in Douala and Yaounde sometimes assume. World Bank data puts individuals using the internet in Cameroon at about 46.3% of the population in 2024. But for the young men who are online, the internet can become a full-time school.

They learn money there. They learn relationships there. They learn masculinity there. They learn politics there. They learn what to desire there.

This is not only a Cameroonian issue. A 2024 FIS survey in the United States found that 40% of Gen Z and 36% of Millennials surveyed said they were learning about finance from social media platforms. A NAPFA survey also found that over one-fourth of Gen Z Americans received financial advice from social media.

Those are American numbers, so we should not pretend they describe Cameroon directly. But they show the direction of travel. When trusted human guidance is weak, digital guidance becomes stronger.

And the internet does not always reward wisdom. It rewards confidence, speed, anger, beauty, money, and certainty. The person who says "work slowly, build character, learn skill, be patient" is competing with the person who says "nobody cares about you, get rich now, dominate everyone."

One message is slower.

The other one feels like power.

We Also Don't Tell Our Stories Well

This part bothers me.

We have Cameroonians who have built things. Real things. Businesses, farms, clinics, schools, agencies, churches, communities, careers, families, art, technology, public service. But many of their stories are locked inside private conversations.

We know more about some American founders than we know about people who built from Bonamoussadi, Buea, Molyko, Akwa, Nkwen, Bastos, Bafoussam, or Kumba.

Part of it is documentation. Part of it is humility. Part of it is fear. Part of it is that many people do not want to expose their mistakes. In Cameroon, if you talk too much, people say you are showing off. If you talk about failure, people may use it against you. So people keep quiet.

But silence has a cost.

If the good examples stay quiet, the loud examples win.

So How Should a Young Man Approach Mentorship?

I do not think the first step is walking up to a successful person and saying, "Please be my mentor."

That can work, but many times it is too vague. The person does not know what you want. You may not even know what you want. And if the person is busy, your request becomes another emotional bill they did not plan to pay.

Start smaller.

Look for wisdom before access.

Read what the person has written. Listen to their interviews. Watch how they work. Study their choices. If they run a business, observe how they talk about customers, employees, money, and failure. If they are married, watch how they speak about their spouse. If they are a pastor, watch whether their life is only performance or if there is fruit. If they are an older friend, watch how they treat people who cannot help them.

You can learn a lot before the person ever knows your name.

The National Academies' report on effective mentorship says mentorship should not be left to chance. That report focuses on STEMM education, not Cameroon specifically, but the point travels well. If mentorship is too important to leave to luck, then young men also have to become more intentional about how they seek it.

Ask better questions.

Not "How can I make it?"

Ask, "When you were my age, what mistake cost you the most?"

Ask, "What skill gave you the biggest advantage?"

Ask, "What did you misunderstand about money?"

Ask, "How did you choose your friends?"

Ask, "What part of marriage surprised you?"

Ask, "What did you learn late that I should start learning now?"

Specific questions respect people's time. They also show that you are not just looking for connection. You are looking for wisdom.

Don't Look for One Perfect Man

Another mistake is expecting one person to carry all the answers.

You may need one person for career. Another for marriage. Another for money. Another for faith. Another for emotional discipline. Another for craft. Another for how to carry yourself in public.

Some men are excellent in business and poor at family. Some are good fathers but weak with money. Some are spiritually grounded but not useful for career advice. Some are brilliant but arrogant. Some are generous but disorganized.

Take wisdom where it is clean. Leave what is not.

This is not cynicism. It is maturity.

Mentors are human beings, not saviors.

Peer Mentorship Counts Too

Sometimes the person who helps you most is not twenty years ahead. Sometimes he is two years ahead.

The friend who learned how to invoice clients before you did. The guy who got rejected by five companies and can help you avoid the mistakes in your CV. The classmate who started therapy and now has language for things you used to hide. The married friend who is honest enough to tell you that love is not vibes alone.

That is mentorship too.

We underrate peer mentorship because we think guidance must come from above. But many young men are saved by honest friendships. Not the kind where everyone is forming hard guy. The kind where someone can say, "I am not okay," and the room does not laugh.

I have written around this before too, in a post called Men Need Support Too, Here's how you do it. That theme keeps coming back for me: men are not only providers, competitors, and problem solvers. Men also need support systems.

And support does not always look dramatic. Sometimes it is one friend asking, "How far, you sure say you dey okay?" and waiting long enough for the real answer.

Older Men Have Work to Do Too

This cannot only be on young men.

Older men also need to make the road visible.

Not every detail. Not every wound. Not everything belongs to the public. But enough truth to help someone behind you.

Show the mistake, not only the award.

Show the season when business was dry.

Show the wrong partnership.

Show the years when marriage was not easy.

Show the bad money decision.

Show the skill you had to learn late.

Show the apology you had to make.

Show the process.

Young men do not only need motivation. They need maps. And sometimes the map is simply an older man saying, "I passed here. This place is dangerous. Walk carefully."

Maybe Mentorship Starts Smaller Than We Think

I do not have a grand solution. I do not think one article will fix how Cameroonian men learn, fail, hide, and survive.

But I think we can start smaller.

If you are young, stop waiting for one perfect mentor to adopt you. Study people. Ask better questions. Build something worth correcting. Offer value where you can. Learn from books, interviews, older posts, sermons, biographies, friends, bosses, and even people's mistakes.

If you are older, do not only show the garage. Show the road.

Because many young men are not lazy. They are not all entitled. Some are simply trying to become men without enough honest examples of what that looks like.

And if we do not mentor them, something else will.