Yaounde Coeur de Ville to kick off as Pilot Committee clears hurdles - Communauté Urbaine de Yaoundé

Members of the pilot committee of the Yaounde Coeur de Ville project have met in their second session to set the ball rolling for the initiative. Chaired by the Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Celestine Ketcha Courtes, February 27, 2024, it brought together stakeholders from the Yaounde City Council, local councils, C2D and the French Development Agency, ADF. 

The sitting was an opportunity for the challenges facing the kick off to be discussed, and solutions proposed. These challenges as identified by the Technical Adviser to the Yaounde City Mayor, Arnauld Ndzana who too is coordinator of the project, include the identification and compensation of ambulant traders to be affected by the project.

To address this, the pilot committee recommended that the identification and payments should commence only when the teams get to the sites.

 “We finally have a start-up date for this project. First of all, I’d like to say that Yaoundé Coeur de Ville is a project designed by the President of the Republic to modernise the capital city of Yaoundé. It involves the construction of major roads, interchanges and bus stations. This project will make Yaoundé one of the most pleasant cities in Africa,” Minister Ketcha Courtes explained. 

Citing the supposed delay, she mentioned that the committee has taken stock of the challenges, and solutions will be laid out accordingly.

She said: “… we have set up a platform that will enable us to take advantage of the lessons learned, because this is not the first project we’ve done with the French Development Agency. We are going to take advantage of the lessons learned from the C2D regional capital project that transformed Bertoua, Garoua, and Bafoussam so that this platform works in synergy… I can assure you that this project is awaited by the President of the Republic and the people will start in 2024.”

Yaounde Coeur de Ville is part of the implementation of the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (PMUS) drawn up by the European Union in 2019. It is co-financed by the State of Cameroon (5.6 billion FCFA) and France through the French Development Agency (AFD)’s C2D debt and development contract mechanism (49.2 billion FCFA).