DEVELOPMENT KRIBI, THE PORT OF GOOD HOPE

Paul Biya could not keep a smile of satisfaction from crossing his face as he presided over the Kribi deepwater port’s cornerstone-laying ceremony on 8 October 2011. One of the biggest infrastructure projects in recent years, the huge industrial-port complex will result in the creation of a new city. The ceremony took place with representatives from China, which is financing and building the project, in attendance. The port, scheduled for completion by 2014, will have the necessary facilities and mechanical and auxiliary installations: control, communication, navigation, lifting and handling systems (gantries and cranes), vehicles and towboats. The China Exim Bank is lending 244 billion FCFA (€372 million) of the investment’s total estimated cost, put at 282 billion FCFA (€430 million). The China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) has been tapped to design, build and completely equip the first building phase. Deepwater facilities are planned at Mboro (30km south of Kribi), where the general port and several terminals (container, aluminium, hydrocarbon and multipurpose) will be built, and Lolabé(4km south of Mboro), where an ore-carrier wharf is in the planning stages. Several private operators will build specialised piers under the BOT (build, operate and transfer) concession system for the export of specific products. Annual traffic forecasts are put at 250,000 to 400,000 20-foot equivalent containers, 35 million tons of iron ore, 3.5 million tons of liquefied natural gas, two million tons of alumina, 1.5 million tons of aluminium, 1.5 million tons of various inputs, three million tons of hydrocarbons and three million tons of various goods. Nobody doubts the port will help boost the mining of natural resources like bauxite, iron, cobalt, and nickel. Now that major mining and industrial operating programmes are being launched, Cameroon urgently needs an up-to-date industrial-port complex boasting specialised terminals to strengthen its export capacity.

The Prime Minister’s Secretary-General, Louis Paul Motaze, who chairs the works’ steering committee, calls this “the start of a new era in Cameroon’s economic expansion, that of major development projects, which integrate and generate growth, jobs and wealth” nationally and regionally. The port will also be “a catalyser in growth acceleration,” he says, because the deepwater facilities will be able to accommodate very-large-capacity ships of up to 100,000tons with a 15-16m draughts. In comparison, the port of Douala, whose channel must undergo constant dredging, can accommodate ships of up to 15,000 tons with sixto seven-meter draughts. Lastly, besides the many direct and indirect jobs that will be created, including in the subregion, a whole sector will see new sources of revenue from port fees on goods and ships, piloting and boatage services, the handling of import-export or transshipment traffic, growth of exports, influx of new private foreign capital, etc. The first strong signal: an urban development plan has already been designed for a modern new city of 100,000 people that will spring up around the new port.

By François BAMBOU