Cameroon’s Road Fund estimates that maintaining the national road network, which spans 121,873 km as of December 31, 2024, will require CFA1.1 trillion in 2025. According to an assessment carried out in July 2024, this maintenance plan covers 39,000 km of roads, including 13,500 meters of bridges and other infrastructure, based on data compiled by the Road Fund.

The funding needs are broken down as follows: Central management road maintenance covers 230 projects over 9,000 km, with an estimated CFA313.6 billion. Regional management maintenance concerns 120 projects spanning 6,000 km, requiring CFA322.7 billion. Communal road maintenance includes 2,547 projects covering 23,000 km, with financial needs pegged at CFA460 billion.

However, according to the Road Fund, “the resources mobilized for the 2025 campaign, from the Public Investment Budget (BIP) and the Road Fund, amount to about CFA100 billion, with CFA52 billion from the BIP and CFA47.78 billion from the Road Fund.” Esaïe Moussa Aubin, the Road Fund administrator, admitted, “These resources cover less than 10% of the identified needs.” Notably, the 2025 budget only allocates CFA60 billion for the Fund’s operations.

The Road Fund’s financial resources have also been inconsistent. For instance, in 2018, the Fund had CFA51 billion, while last year, it was limited to CFA43 billion. Since 2018, CFA310 billion have been allocated to the Fund’s maintenance budget.

Due to the limited funding available for 2025, the selection of projects will be based on certain objective criteria, as stated by the Fund, which operates under the Ministry of Public Works. As a result, with the available resources and prioritization criteria in mind, the Fund has selected 233 road maintenance projects. These projects are distributed across different management levels: 45 central management projects, 11 regional management projects, and 177 communal management projects. In total, these projects cover 5,460 km of roads and 1,499 meters of infrastructure.

This represents only 4.5% of the total length of Cameroon’s national road network.

The limited resources allocated to the Road Fund are partly due to the regulatory framework governing the organization, despite the 2022 law aimed at protecting the road network, which grants the Fund more authority over road maintenance.

This situation has caught the attention of the country’s leadership, including President Paul Biya. In his New Year’s Eve address on December 31, 2024, Biya acknowledged that “the state of our road network does not reflect the efforts and sacrifices made for its rehabilitation and expansion.” He acknowledged that the challenges, especially the availability of funding, are well-known and revealed that he had “instructed the reorganization of the Road Fund to enhance its capacity to mobilize the necessary funds for the construction, rehabilitation, and maintenance of roads.”

Source: Business in Cameroon