The Curioscope Magazine Interview: "Success Is Not a Straight Line"
How Nfor Nde Nyambi Turned a Student Struggle into NdeTek Papers (2,500+ Users)
"Success Is Not a Straight Line: How Nfor Nde Nyambi Built NdeTek Papers" ran as the front-page interview feature in The Curioscope's First Edition, written by journalists Esunge Melvin Akella and Nah Emmanuella.
A Problem Every Student Recognizes:
The article opens with a scene familiar to almost any university student: exam season arriving alongside the scramble to find past questions, students moving hostel to hostel asking classmates for materials, spending money photocopying worn-out papers, or carrying thick bundles of documents while trying to prepare. Nfor experienced that reality firsthand as a student himself, and it became the seed for NdeTek Papers.
From Idea to Platform:
NdeTek Papers was founded in 2023 and officially launched in 2024. By the time of this interview, it served students at the University of Buea, the University of Bamenda, HIBMAT (HUIB) Buea, and Landmark Buea, with more than 2,500 registered users. Access runs on a semester-based subscription: 1,050 FCFA to unlock past questions from a student's department and other departments within the same faculty. To keep the paper archive growing, the platform also pays contributors 50 FCFA per verified paper uploaded, a crowdsourcing model that makes the archive a shared effort rather than something maintained by one team alone.
"My inspiration was the fact that, during exam periods, there was no easy way to get past questions," Nyambi told the journalists. "Those who managed to get them often had to buy them, while others had to carry around large bundles of papers."
Before NdeTek: Where the Journey Started:
The article traces Nfor's roots back to Mamfe, where he was born, and the North-West Region, where he was raised. He began his education at GNS Mbonkoh-Kake in Ndop, before moving to CBNPS Ndop, where he obtained his First School Leaving Certificate in 2013. He later attended GBHS Ndop, earning his GCE Ordinary Level certificate in the Science stream, and continued to CBI Dschang for his Advanced Level studies in the S1 Science stream, a path that laid the groundwork long before he ever wrote a line of code professionally.
On Resilience:
"Never see failure as the end. Keep moving," Nyambi said. "It is important to understand how to manage your staff and finances, and to know when and how to invest. The race to the goal is not about who wins first, but about who lasts in the race."
Why the Feature Matters:
The Curioscope frames NdeTek Papers as part of a broader shift in Cameroon's university system toward student-driven academic tools, solutions built by people who lived the problem firsthand rather than observed it from the outside. The full nine-page feature, including the complete interview text, is available as a PDF below.