A networker in Cameroon

It was only really by chance that David Simo from Cameroon learnt German as a child at school, but it turned out to have a profound impact on his life, as a number of years later he moved to Ivory Coast to study German. He subsequently trained as a German 
teacher there. Simo also studied in Europe, qualifying as a professor at Leibniz Universität Hannover with a postdoctoral dissertation on the writer Hubert Fichte. When a German department was established at the University of Yaoundé in his home country, Simo was appointed its head and developed German studies at the university into one 
of the leading chairs in West Africa. The 64-year-old professor speaks German fluently and without any accent – listening to him, it is easy to forget that he is African.

Simo won the Reimar Lüst Award for International Scholarly and Cultural Exchange in 2008. Endowed with 50,000 euros and bestowed by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the award paid tribute to the services rendered by this outstanding literary scholar to academic relations with Germany. Ever since, Simo has been closely associated with both foundations. From 2010 to 2014, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation provided the University of Yaoundé with 450,000 euros in funding to set up the Centre for German-African Scientific Cooperation (DAW), of which Simo is now the director. “For us this funding was unusual but well-justified,“ says Thyssen Foundation Director Frank Suder, praising Simo’s exceptional qualities as an “academic networker”. “We built up the centre with great optimism,” the Cameroonian German studies expert says about DAW, although it now faces an uncertain future after the German funding came to an end. As one of the Humboldt Foundation’s Ambassador Scientists, the professor is still a key point of contact for many young people from all over West Africa who are interested in spending a period of time researching in Germany and wish to obtain further information.

Having committed himself to academic exchange between Germany and Africa for 40 years, Simo emphasises Cameroon’s considerable interest in Germany. “German is a standard subject at schools in Cameroon, and a language that is learnt by hundreds of thousands of Cameroonians,” he explains. Currently around 6,000 Cameroonians are studying in Germany – not only German, but also subjects like IT and engineering.