Cameroon's Infrastructure : A Continental Perspective

Dominguez-Torres, Carolina ; Foster, Vivien

关键词: ACCESS TO ELECTRICITY;    ACCESS TO WATER SUPPLY;    ACCESSIBILITY;    ACCIDENTS;    ACCOUNTING;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-5822
RP-ID  :  WPS5822

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The poor state of Cameroon'sinfrastructure is a key bottleneck to the nation'seconomic growth. From 2000 to 2005, improvements ininformation and communications technology (ICT) boostedCameroon's growth performance by 1.26 percentage pointsper capita, while deficient power infrastructure held growthback by 0.28 points per capita. If Cameroon could improveits infrastructure to the level of Africa'smiddle-income countries, it could raise its per capitaeconomic growth rate by about 3.3 percentage points.Cameroon has made significant progress in many aspects ofinfrastructure, implementing institutional reforms across abroad range of sectors with a view to attractingprivate-sector participation and finance, which hasgenerally led to performance improvements. But the countrystill faces a number of important infrastructure challenges,including poor road quality, expensive and unreliableelectricity, and a stagnating and uncompetitive ICT sector.Cameroon currently spends around $930 million per year oninfrastructure, with $586 million lost to inefficiencies.Removing those inefficiencies would leave an infrastructurefunding gap of $350 million per year. Given Cameroon'srelatively strong economy and natural-resource base, as wellas its success in attracting private financing, the countryshould be able to close that gap and meet its infrastructuregoals within 13 years.