Cameroon bans AI homework help for nursery and primary pupils 🇨🇲🚫

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In a circular letter dated 14 October 2026 and addressed to regional delegates, Cameroon’s Minister of Basic Education, Laurent Serge Etoundi Ngoa, has banned pupils from using artificial intelligence tools for classwork and homework, with immediate effect. The ban covers nursery and primary schools across the country.

Chatbots on parents’ smartphones 🧠

The letter names four tools: ChatGPT, Meta AI (the assistant available through WhatsApp), Gemini and Copilot. These generative assistants can write a text or solve a sum in seconds. According to field reports cited by the ministry, children are using them more and more, sometimes with their parents’ direct help.

The minister’s concern is simple: when the machine produces the answers, the child loses the practice needed to learn to read, write, count and reason. He also points out that young pupils struggle to spot the inaccurate, misleading or invented information these apps can produce.

A framework drawn from UNESCO guidance 🌍

The decision draws on UNESCO’s guidance, which recommends a minimum age of 13 for using generative AI in the classroom. It applies to public, private secular, international and faith-based schools. According to press reports, the ban also covers school grounds, on school equipment as well as on pupils’ personal phones.

A chain of relays, from the ministry to the classroom 🏫

According to the letter as reported by the press, departmental delegates and district inspectors have fifteen days to pass the instruction on to schools. Head teachers must then inform teachers and pupils, display the text on the premises and make sure it is respected.

Teachers are asked to favour handwriting, counting, drawing and spoken explanations, to check pupils’ understanding through oral questions, and to give more weight to supervised classroom work than to homework done at home. They must also teach children, at an age-appropriate level, that digital tools can give wrong answers and that personal data should never be shared online. Teachers themselves remain free to use AI to prepare lessons, on their own responsibility.

Parents are expected to support learning 👨‍👩‍👧

Responsibility for the measure does not rest with schools alone. The ministry asks parent associations and school councils to make families aware of the risks of using AI to do children’s homework for them. School heads are expected to explain the decision at the general meetings of the parent-teacher associations (APEE).

Parents are encouraged to keep phones out of reach during homework and to support their children by asking questions, guiding them and letting them find the answers themselves. To reach rural families too, the awareness effort can draw on community radio stations, places of worship and traditional authorities, with messages in French, English and the relevant local languages. Regional representatives of private secular, international and faith-based education are, for their part, to be informed of how the instruction applies in their schools and asked to cooperate.

Monitoring planned through to the end of the school year 📋

According to press reports, compliance will be one of the points reviewed during teaching supervision visits. Regional delegates are also asked to submit a first implementation report by the end of the first term of the 2026/2027 school year, followed by a final report at the end of the year. With this decision, the ministry says it wants to protect foundational learning and support children’s knowledge, skills and independence.

Between innovation and learning 🤔

The text does not reject technology as such: it restricts its use to the age at which foundational skills are built. The open question is how to enforce the ban outside school, where homework actually gets done.

Is Cameroon taking a step back by banning nursery and primary pupils from using AI for their homework, or protecting its children’s future? Tell us in the comments.