Yaounde-Brazzaville Corridor: Cameroon's capital now connected to Congo in 7 hours by road

Those who leave Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, to go to Ntam, the last town in the East Cameroon region bordering Congo, can now do so in 7 hours by road on the Yaounde-Brazzaville corridor.

Indeed, it is a record possible since December 22, when the Minister of Public Works, Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi, inaugurated the missing links, on the Cameroon side, of the Sangmelima-Ouesso road, opening in Congo. These are the Cameroonian sections consisting of: Sangmelima-Bikoula (85 km), Bikoula-Djoum (38 km); Djoum-Mintom (98 km); Mintom-Lélé (67.50 km) and Lélé-Ntam-Mbalam (53 km), a total of 321.5 km of roads developed.

"At the time, to leave Yaounde for Ntam, you could make 4 days on the way. From Djoum, after Sangmelima it was terrible. The road was so bad. In the rainy season, it was serious. The cars would get stuck in the mud. You had to push the car to move forward. That's how we spent a day on a stretch of road. Sometimes we would find that a truck carrying logs had overturned. It would take one or two days to clear the road. Today, in a few hours we leave Yaoundé for Ntam on the border with Congo. It's like a dream," says Louis Roger Ndengue, a transporter and local resident.

During the inauguration ceremony, Joseph Nguessan, the representative of the African Development Bank for Central Africa, one of the donors of the road project, also told an anecdote: "I worked as an expert on this project. I did the route at the time to get a feel for the reality on the ground. This road that you see today was a track! Today, it is a source of pride to see two CEMAC capitals linked by road. It is theAfDB's ambition to see this kind of initiative multiply in Central Africa.

Accompanied by his colleagues in the transport ministry, Jean Ernest Massena Ngallé Bibehe, the civil service ministry, Joseph LE, and the Sangha prefect in Congo, Gilbert Mouanda-Mouanda, the project owner, for his part, said the project would be completed by the end of 2008.He praised the quality of the work which is up to standards, with weighing stations and rest areas for transporters. The member of the government invited the population to make good use of it; to engage in agriculture, because the road now allows the evacuation of agricultural products in order to sell them in neighbouring Congo.

"Moreover, the opening up of this area promotes economic development with not only the flow of agricultural products, but also facilitates transfers between the towns of Djoum and the Congo.In addition, the opening up of this area promotes economic development with not only the flow of agricultural products, but also facilitates the flow of goodsbetween the cities of Djoum and Mintom as well as the movement of large trucks from Congo-Brazzaville who come to sell their goods at the port of Douala, "explained Mintp.

The updated figures of the cost of the Cameroonian links of the Sangmelima-Ouesso corridor indicate that this work has cost 205.1 billion CFA francs. The funding was mobilized by various donors such as Badea, IDB, ADB, the Saudi Development Fund, the Kuwait Fund and the two states involved in the project.

Source: www.investiraucameroun.com