All Roads Lead to China

 There’s a guy that’s pretty famous in Batibo, I pass him almost every time I’m moving along the rough and hilly dirt roads that connect the various villages. Every morning he grabs a wheelbarrow and a shovel and goes to work filling in potholes. Initially he was doing this without compensation as a response to the lack of road maintenance; his indispensable services have since been contracted by the council. Some days he has help, most days I see him alone. I shudder to think of the amount of red dirt this guy has moved over the course of his career, but he seems content to do it. I think he feels secure in the knowledge that his job is hugely important, more so because he’s mainly the only one doing it.

 Elsewhere in Cameroon there are other road projects underway. The past decades have been witness to a remarkable amount of road and infrastructure development throughout Cameroon and the entirety of Africa, unprecedented relative to the decades preceding them. Modern African nations have spent most of their histories in isolation. Colonial superpowers were quick to build railways to transport soldiers and export goods, but these did little to help the local’s freedom of movement. After 20^th century movements for independence, many newly emerged African states opted to tighten their borders as a way to promote internal trade, often creating in-country boundaries to increase opportunities for corruption. While these policies that have stifled infrastructure development are still evident in Cameroon today, it seem like nothing will stop the advance of the tarred road.

 With road development being underfunded throughout most of Cameroon’s history, many stakeholders are desperate to play catch-up. Sub-Saharan Africa currently spends about $7 billion a year paving roads, many economists and nearly all lobbyists say this is not nearly enough. The cost of moving goods in Africa is, on average, two to three times higher than the cost of transporting them in developed countries. All PCVs in Cameroon have seen huge trucks in ditches alongside unpaved roads, if you’re lucky it may have even been a Brasseries truck, that’s a prime example of why shipping costs are so ridiculous in Africa. The World Bank estimated that accidents on Uganda’s terrible roads costed the country 2.7% of its GDP in 2015. To scale it down a bit, everybody knows the okada guy is going to charge you twice as much to go up the rocky hill of death than he is to go twice the distance on a nice paved road. Heavy risk, long wait times, and inconsistency in delivery are throttling Cameroon’s ability to export its goods to a demanding market. Up until recently, Cameroon lacked the equipment and capital to handle its road situation, so what’s changing?

 Enter the People’s Republic of China on the back of an asphalt spewing dragon with bulldozer claws. From Durban to Algiers, Chinese engineers, workers, and equipment are now familiar fixtures of the African landscape and we know that Cameroon is not an exception. China’s need to internationalize its job growth and investments coupled with Cameroon’s need for affordable development of its infrastructure seems like a match made in heaven, but a convenient pairing isn’t always the best. China’s foreign direct investment has been skyrocketing in Cameroon since the mid-2000s and beyond, with funding coming from both the Chinese government and a multitude of Chinese investment banks. Much of this money, diverted through the Cameroonian government, goes straight into the accounts of Chinese construction firms. Although these construction projects create jobs for Cameroonians, most of them are labor oriented, favoring Chinese engineers and technicians over perfectly abled Cameroonians. In many instances this pushes the Cameroonian government into the unsustainable position of creating jobs for skilled Chinese workers building roads with borrowed Chinese money to get to resources that will be shipped to China. It’s easy to see that this relationship is pretty one-sided.

 “The increasing environmental footprint of China in natural resources in Cameroon is due to both direct and indirect investments. Most Chinese activities are as a result of government’s applied funding from China into public projects, others are due to private direct investment from China…Cameroon’s debt to China is fast growing and it is a major cause for concern because the state doesn’t really have the power to decide on the outcomes of Sino-Cameroon cooperation,” - Samule Nguifo, Executive Secretary of Center for Environmental Development Cameroon (CED).

 Cameroon is fertile investment ground for China and with every investment there is a reason and a return. The East region has experienced a proportionately large amount of construction projects due to the timber and mining industries. The roadways connecting the East to Douala harbor and the recently constructed (by China) deep water port at Kribi have also received a lot of Chinese attention. The pattern that emerges should leave no doubt as to China’s aims in Cameroon. Many African economists have been have been weary of China’s role in development on the continent, rightfully so. Short-sightedness will be the biggest weakness to Cameroon as its relationship with China develops.

 I don’t mean to bash on China. Chinese manufactured goods have opened up commercial markets in Cameroon that no one thought could exist before, and even if they have their own agenda in Cameroonian road construction at least someone is doing it. The Anglophone regions have the least amount of tarred road in Cameroon, but most PCVs in those regions will tell you how fast that’s changing. The Trans-African highway is every Batibro’s best friend, and the Kumba-Mamfe road is going to make it easier for everybody in the South West. These roads are making it far easier for farm-to-market transportation on every level; from large organizations now having access to Nigerian markets to smallholder farmers who now have an easier time accessing their local ones. 

A particularly bad day on the Bamenda-Bafoussam Highway in rainy season.

            It’s evident how information technology and electronics are changing the way Cameroonians live, but I think the technology having the most impact on the nation is straight out of the Iron Age. Paved roads are turning geographically isolated parts of the country into major players in the national economy. I’m hopeful that Cameroon’s precarious gamble with China will pay off in the end, with increased access to resources and lower costs of transportation offsetting the debt it has incurred, but it’s too soon to tell. While the economic partnership has been mostly beneficial thus far, Cameroon will have to remain vigilant. With any luck, as time goes on, Cameroon will be more like that guy in Batibo shoveling red dirt; taking initiative and bettering their infrastructure with their own resources.