(Business in Cameroon) - On December 3, 2014, Cameroonian Head of State, Paul Biya, published a decree authorising Economy Minister, Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi, to sign a 41 billion FCFA loan agreement with export-import company out of China (Eximbank China) to finance the national fibre-optic expansion project.

According to reliable sources, this financing should facilitate building the urban fibre-optic networks of several Cameroonian towns and cities, thus expanding the national fibre-optic network which is currently estimated to cover 6,000 km. Cameroon’s “digital improvement” plans “require laying 10,000 or even 20,000 km of fibre-optic cables to cover the entire country,” the Postal Services and Telecom Minister, Jean-Pierre Biyiti bi Essam, back in May 2013 in Maroua when inaugurating the fibre-optic initiative.

Eximbank’s new finacing will allow the Cameroonian government to carry-out plans to lay 10,000 km of fibre-optics by 2015. Indeed, In May 2013 in Maroua, the Postal Services and Telecom Minister had announced that “the government has just signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Chinese company to lay approximately 4,000 km of additional fibre-optics in the near future. Talks are on-going to finalise this loan agreement with the aim being to provide full service to all government offices across Cameroon.”