A road collapsing in the place known as Manyai, almost half-way through the Yaoundé-Douala road, has been prevented since 21 October 2016 the traffic between the two main cities in Cameroon. The Cameroonian Minister of Public Works, Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi, visited the site to assess the damages and consider the emergency measures to put in place to re-establish the traffic.

In the meantime, we learned, hundreds of transporters are blocked in each of the two metropoles. For travellers, there are however still the much more expensive options of the railway or flying, the public airline Camair-Co offering at least two daily flights between the two main cities. Just a day of interruption in the road traffic between Yaoundé and Douala is very costly for the Cameroonian economy and beyond.

Indeed, in addition to the losses registered by companies and other travel agencies linking the two capitals, the blocked road is part of the Douala-Ndjamena and Douala-Bangui corridors, the latter through which transit on a daily basis important volumes of goods heading for Chad and the Central African Republic.

BRM