Road Rehabilitation: Cameroon To Experiment With Cost-effective Technique

Cameroon will experiment with the Emulsion Enhanced Recycling (EER) technique for the renovation of the 115-kilometre road connecting Mbalmayo in the Centre and Sangmelima in the South, according to local news portal Business In Cameroon.

"The technique involves reusing worn-out in-place material and improving its performance by recycling it... The result is an in-place material that can withstand traffic for ten to fifteen years," explains Blaise Simo, technical manager at Razel Cameroun.  

Developed in the United States, the technique is already in use in Europe, Morocco, Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, Mali, and Ghana. It is expected to reduce road rehabilitation costs in the country. "Pavement recycling projects are less costly than conventional approaches," says the Ministry of Public Works. Recycling reduces the number of quarry materials to be imported. It also reduces the need to set up crushing plants or open new quarries. It helps save transport costs as there will be fewer materials to supply from outside and also saves execution times. 

To facilitate the execution of these works, the project has been divided into three lots. To date, 3.2 percent of work on lot 1, entrusted to Routd'Af, for an about FCFA 7.7 billion contract, has been completed. On lot 2, financed to the tune of FCFA 7.5 billion FCFA, Arab Contractors has completed seven percent of the works. On the third lot, entrusted to Razel for nearly FCFA 5.103 billion, the execution rate is 3.5 percent. Overall, the country is expected to spend FCFA 20.3 billion to renovate the 115-kilometre road. That is an average of FCFA 176 million per kilometre of road. 

For several years now, Cameroon has been known as one of the African countries with the most expensive roads. In 2013, during a meeting of the focal points of the National Road Council (Conaroute), it was revealed that the average price per kilometer of paved road in Cameroon is estimated at around FCFA 205 million while the African average is FCFA 100 million. In a report published in 2018, the World Bank revealed that certain road infrastructures in Cameroon are two to six times more expensive than African projects of the same scale.