The Kumba-Mamfe road is controversial in any number of ways.
By Azore Opio
It is first a nightmare travellers have had to put up with for much of the past two decades.
The road, and it is only 149 km, cuts across the second largest cocoa-growing area in Cameroon.
Kumba-Mamfe road is a natural extension of the Bamenda-Enugu corridor and a very important segment in the Lagos-Mombasa Trans-African Highway.
It is also a very important missing link in the lofty trans-African freeway vision, which has somewhat metamorphosed into an hallucination.
An Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) financed with Cameroon’s Public Investment Budget (PIB), enumerates the benefits of constructing the road to include a boost in trade between Douala, the main towns of the South West Region and the towns of Eastern Nigerian States; connecting Anglophone and Francophone Cameroon and boosting trade between the two regional economic communities, ECCAS and ECOWAS.
The road would be developed and rehabilitated in three segments: Kumba-Supe Bakundu, Supe Bakundu-Nfaïtock and Nfaïtock-Bachuo Akagbe.
According to the ESIA, the project comprises the following components: Development of 101.5 km of road comprising two segments: Kumba-Kumbe Bakundu (54.439 km) and Nfaïtock-Bachuo Akagbe (46.880 km) to be paved with bituminous concrete, with a breadth of 7 metres and shoulders of 1.5 metres on each side; rehabilitation of 49.544 km of road between Kumba Bakundu and Nfaïtock to be paved with bituminous concrete with a breadth of 7 metres and shoulders of 1.5 metres on each side.
Related works will involve the development of about 100 km of feeder roads, the construction of five market stalls, four women’s and youth centres, rehabilitation and reconstruction of five primary schools, construction of two foot bridges and the supply of small farm produce processing and conservation equipment as well as the laying of optical fibre cable in the South West Region.
Outside the construction of the main road, actions and measures to mitigate the negative impact on the environment will include raising awareness on environmental protection, road safety, prevention of AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases and malaria.
The Kumba-Mamfe road would be constructed with funds from the African Development Bank (AfDB).
