As of December 31, 2025, Cameroon had only 10,939.92 kilometers of paved roads, relegating over 110,000 kilometers to dirt road status. The predominance of unpaved roads exposes the country's productive apparatus to frequent traffic disruptions during rainy seasons, a vulnerability exacerbated by the modest budget allocated to the Road Fund for the current fiscal year.

The programmed financial allocations for 2026 amount to 47.784 billion CFA francs, a sum that barely covers 31.7% of the actual maintenance needs. The funding deficit, which exceeds 100 billion CFA francs compared to an estimated optimal annual need of 150 billion CFA francs, forces the administration to make restrictive choices about which projects to prioritize. The current roadmap provides for the implementation of 263 projects to address 5,215.41 kilometers of roads and 2,620.89 linear meters of bridges, in addition to managing 488 rehabilitation contracts covering 13,445.11 kilometers of axes connecting the main agricultural production basins.

The operational decentralization of road maintenance also reveals significant financial disparities at the level of decentralized territorial authorities, whose communal and regional networks are pulling the overall quality of the heritage down. The central state's financial transfers for 2026 allocate 8 billion CFA francs to regions and 41 billion CFA francs to municipalities. Local resources aim to improve 3,683 kilometers of roads and 3,243 linear meters of bridges, a budget that is not proportionate to the extent of rural access networks. To reverse the current curative logic, which is particularly costly for the public treasury, the Ministry of Public Works initiated engineering studies in April 2026 to formalize a preventive maintenance doctrine aimed at securing the mobility of production factors.


Ndjomo Carlos

Tags: réseau routier cameroun routes en terre financement routier maintenance routière décentralisation transferts financiers aménagement rural travaux publics mobilité