In 2015, when Malieh Maxime wanted to leave home in Bamenda, a city in northwestern Cameroon, to study software engineering at the University of Douala, a school in the country’s capital Littoral Region, his parents told him he couldn’t.
Bamenda is one of Cameroon’s English-speaking cities, while Douala is a French-speaking city and home to most of the country’s universities. So, leaving for school meant moving to a new location where he and his family knew nobody.
“We didn’t know anyone there, and we had to pay for everything, including rent and fees, which we couldn’t afford,” Maxime says.
But Maxime had heard from his friends that he could tutor children from their homes and make enough money to live on. He thus assured his parents that he could take care of himself.
To his greatest surprise, however, he found it extremely challenging to find clients willing to pay for the services he wanted to offer when he resumed school.
Nevertheless, he got a client. One of his…
