Africités 2003 - Yaoundé (Cameroun)

Topic of the seminar : "To ensure the access to the basic services in the African local communities "

The Africite summit gathered the Panafrican days of the local communities from the 2 to December 6, 2003 in Yaounde in Republic of Cameroun. The CODATU thus organized with SITRASS a workshop whose topic was "Transport and Urban mobility ".

It arises that urban displacements are an essential component of the urban life, necessary for the access to various opportunities which the city offers: urban services, social employment and exchanges, in particular for the satsfaction of the essential needs that are the food, education or health …The conditions of mobility observed in the African cities are currently difficult and expensive at the same time for the users and the community . The crisis of the conditions of circulation and the offer of collective transport developed during the last decade. The weakness of motorized mobility is then compensated by a recourse raised to the walking.

According to the exploratory study undertaken by SITRASS, African local communities'hitherto for the majority were implied little in the management of urban mobility, intervening partly on the networks of roadway system but tending to leave in the State its historical role of supervision of the urban transport. This State moves with the favour of the process of decentralization, of the official disengagement of the sector, and the awakening of the essential stake of an effective system of displacements.

On the basis of this diagnosis, the workshop examined measurements available to the municipalieis to facilitate mobility, in particular that of the most vulnerable groups :

installations of roadway system in favour of the soft modes of proximity ,
dynamics of offer of collectives transport which itself calls mechanisms of financing adapted with a call with the sector deprived within a framework controlled by the public power (the State and local authorities having to act in a concerted way).
The institutional organization which accompanies the municipal implication was questioned through the prism of three topics :

Organisation of the public transport : articulation between the enterprise and the craft industry starting from the Brazilian experience.
The roadway system as a precondition for the circulation of the various road modes : question of the control work with several diagrams of implication of the communities starting from the experience of Cotonou.
Design of an organizing or regulating Authority : experience of Dakar, whose seniority reaches 6 years in 2003.

The workshop concluded its work by a debate on the expression from recommendations for a good management from urban mobility by the African cities. These recommendations rested as bases departure on the declaration of Lome presented at the exit of the conference CODATU X (November 2002). They should make it possible to the persons in charge for the towns of find a framework of action whose they will be able to negociate the realization with the State and the basic financial backers.