The President’s current stay in Douala veritably sets the stage for the effective plunging of the country into a wide worksite.

With just a few months to go for the year to end, many skeptics were already conjecturing about President Biya’s ability to keep electoral promises, mostly with that he made at the third ordinary congress of his ruling CPDM in 2011, to turn Cameroon into a vast construction site beginning from 2013.

In Douala yesterday, he set the ball rolling rather fast, beginning with the laying of the foundation stone for the construction of the second bridge over the River Wouri. The expected inauguration of the Logbaba gas project in the Ndogpassi area of the city today will not only begin Cameroon’s era as an onshore gas producer, but also seals the determination of the political will to get the nation into a new gear in the movement to attaining economic emergence status circa 2035.

It can therefore be said that the nation is firmly set on the road to that emergence status for a number of reasons; least of which is not the significant choice of the launching of construction work on the bridge yesterday and the inauguration of this morning. Take the bridge project.

Douala is the nation’s economic nerve centre and any attempt to improve on any aspects of its development, notably the flow of goods into and out of the city, greatly impacts the economic performance of the entire nation. As the President of the Republic revealed yesterday, over 80 percent of all the food consumed in Douala crosses the River Wouri and on the other side manufactured goods destined for other parts of Cameroon have to cross the river to get to their desired destinations.

Political will

 The people of Douala are arguably the most hard pressed when it comes to developmental initiatives with the ability to address problems in the health, housing, employment and city commutation dismally low. So addressing the problems of Douala, as the President did with the building of a new bridge is significant in that it sets a clear signal for other things to come; and which constitute the President’s desire in attaining emergent economic status and which are encapsulated in his “Greater Accomplishments” package.

In the past few months, the President has been out in several parts of the country laying a number of foundation stones for hydroelectricity dams with the aim of increasing the badly needed energy in the industrial sector.

In Douala yesterday, he announced a number of new projects in other key areas, notably roads, which will greatly impact development and consequently and progressively transform the country into the modern state which the President wants it to be. The President announced, inter-alia, the start of the first phase of the ultra-modern Yaounde-Douala expressway, the construction of the Kumba-Mamfe highway, the Ring road in the North-West Region as well as rehabilitation works on the Garoua-Kousseri and the completion of the Meiganga-Ngaoundéré roads among other important road projects.

In fact, the President’s wish is to see the principal agglomerations of the country get linked to the city of Douala and the projected ports of Kribi and Limbe with good road networks. Besides, he also announced coming projects in the areas of health education and housing, stressing that any effort made in modernizing these areas is already an effort in attaining emergence because it is the sum total of these that makes up for emergence. But the President emphasized that this political will to progress must also be accompanied by private initiatives because, as he said, government cannot do all alone.

The people of Douala went to bed somehow convinced that in spite of the serious traffic inconveniences they suffered from yesterday, what they expect in return from the President’s visit is worth the sacrifice.