A digital agency that teaches, not a school that consults.
SmartSana does paid technical work for clients: analysis, automation, cloud infrastructure, campaigns. The academy exists because we kept needing people we could not find, and because the gap between what training produces and what the work requires was one we were already paying to close.
Almost everything we teach exists online, much of it free. What does not exist here is the structure that gets a working adult to the end of it: a fixed weekly deadline, somebody who notices when you stop, a room with electricity. And, at the other end, the two things a junior CV never has: a certification an employer abroad recognises, and somebody who will vouch for work you actually did. We built the middle and both ends, because we need them ourselves.
Why we exist
Three things shaped this academy, and they explain every design decision on this site.
- Course content is free; completion is not. A well-known online academy sells a full catalogue for around $49 a year. Charging for lessons alone stopped being a business some time ago. Charging for getting somebody to the end, with a deadline, a coach and a room that has power, still is.
- A certificate nobody can check is worth what the paper costs. If you plan to work abroad or to emigrate to Canada, the United States or Europe, a local training certificate means nothing there, and an AWS or Microsoft one means the same as it does in Houston. So we made the industry certification compulsory and put it above our own. We would rather be the school whose certificate matters least.
- Nobody will give you experience without experience. That is the actual wall, not the knowledge. So we stopped waiting for employers to break it and arranged a short placement ourselves, as part of the programme. Two months, remote, unpaid, and written into the terms.
The company, and Labs
Real clients, real briefs
We deliver paid technical work (analysis, automation, cloud infrastructure, campaigns) for organisations in Cameroon and beyond. Your projects come from those briefs rather than from a textbook, and the people teaching you are the people delivering them.
Some of our learners join the team
We hire from our own cohorts. It is not a promise we can make to any individual and we will not pretend it is, but it is why the teaching is held to the standard we hire at rather than the standard a syllabus requires.
SmartSana Labs
Labs is how Level 3 learners deliver supervised work for real organisations (analysis, automations, campaigns, infrastructure reviews) under an instructor’s supervision and to a real deadline. You finish with dated, documented, referenceable delivered work and a contactable client.
For organisations: supervised work on a defined brief, at a rate that reflects the fact that the people doing it are learning. Get in touch if you have a piece of work that would suit.
The campus
Melen, opposite POLYTECH
- Free high-bandwidth wifi throughout your level, during opening hours.
- Lab machines, including Windows workstations for Power BI.
- Backup power, so the room works when the grid does not.
- Space to work alone and space to work in a squad of four.
And if you are not in Yaoundé
Every programme runs fully online from the same timetable, with the same assignments and the same coach. Live sessions are recorded within the hour and always downloadable; every deadline carries forty-eight hours of grace. You can switch between campus and online mid-level by telling your coach.
Visit, or book an information sessionWhat we won’t promise
- A job. We can bring you to the hiring bar, prepare you for a vendor certification set to an international standard, put two months of work for a partner company on your CV and introduce you to employers. We cannot make anyone hire you, and any school that says otherwise is selling something.
- That it will be light. Twenty-two hours a week for eleven weeks. If that does not fit your life right now, say so before you pay rather than after.
- A visa. The internship and the certification both help an immigration file, one as relevant work experience, the other as an assessed credential. Neither is a visa, neither guarantees one, and we will never sell you one.
- An employment rate. We have not run a cohort to completion yet, so we have no outcome figures and we will not borrow anyone else’s. When we have them, we will publish them with the methodology, the cohort size, the date and the response rate, including the bad ones.
Two ways to start. Both begin with a conversation.
Request information if you want an admissions advisor to call you, look at your profile and tell you honestly which programme and level fit. Apply if you already know. Either way, apart from the 10 000 FCFA application fee, which is your enrolment fee, paid once and not refundable, nothing is due until a place is confirmed in writing. After that, each tuition payment is refunded in full if you ask within 14 days of making it.
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