Evaluation Team

This report is prepared by Messrs. P.A ROCHON, Principal Evaluation Officer and Idir KENDEL, Consultant, following a mission to Cameroon from 12 to 30 March 2007. All questions should be referred to Mr. H. RAZAFINDRAMANANA.

Objective

The objective of the study is to evaluate Bank assistance to Cameroon in the transport sector, as well as its impact on the country’s development, within the framework of the Bank’s strategies during the period 1996-2004. The goal is to see whether these strategies were relevant, if the interventions achieved their goals, if the allocated resources were used judiciously and if the instruments used were the most appropriate. The purpose of this evaluation is thus to measure the performance of the Bank, while highlighting the factors on.

Main Findings

• Cameroon has the 2nd largest asphalted road network and the 2nd largest trunk road network among ECCAS countries, with a paved roads rate of 22 % (ECCAS average 15 %). However, of the country’s 10 provinces, 3 handle 75 % of daily medium-heavy traffic, but are equipped with only 37 % of the paved network. Transport expenditure constituted 4.7% of the budget of the populations, which is almost as much as their health expenditure (5.7%). According to official surveys, 26 to 34 % of transport costs are due to racketeering by the security service personnel posted on the roads.

• At end - 2004, the cumulative commitments of the Bank Group in Cameroon’s transport sector since 1972, represented 37 % of its total cumulative commitments over a 33- year period, a rate higher than the average of its commitments in Africa in this sector (17 %). The CSP 1996-1998 did not envisage any Transport sector operation and it is in the CSP 1999-2001 that this sector reappears and the CSP 2002-2004 also maintains the Transport sector in the Bank strategy, following extensive consultations with the Cameroonian civil society.

• The 3 projects financed fell within the framework of Cameroon’s development Programmes and of the Bank’s policy and strategies. More than 35 studies featuring in Cameroon’s transport sectoral Program (TSP), were used as a basis for the evaluation of these projects. The relevance and quality at entry of Bank assistance were thus very satisfactory, contrary to their effectiveness and their efficiency, since all these projects incurred delays of more than 2.5 years, entailing an upward revision of their local costs. Bank assistance impacted the development of the two executing agencies, by extending their experience to the implementation of infrastructure projects with a strong social dimension, which the Bank was the first to initiate in Cameroon. Even if the institutional impacts resulting from collective actions are difficult to quantify, the Bank reinforced the actions of the Multi- Donor Committee (MDC) and the opening of the regional Representation of the Bank in Cameroon should further reinforce this assistance.
   
• Thanks to the increase in the budgets of the Road Fund and the great experience of CNIC in large shipyards, the sustainability of these operations remains highly probable. As regards the social aspects and gender equality, the Bank’s performance is satisfactory. The impact on private sector development is unsatisfactory. One of the two roads has considerably reinforced economic integration (Cameroon, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea) and constitutes a vector of revitalization of their trade. The repair of tankers and oil platforms in the Gulf of Guinea will also strengthen co-operation in the area. As regards financial engineering, it was for the enclave project that the Bank responded to the co-financing proposal, via the ADB window. The 2 financial instruments used (ADF, ADB) were thus well-adapted and enabled the Bank to increase its commitments in Cameroon, even if it had had to seek the IMF’s “no objection”.
   
• With several stakeholders involved in the management of the road heritage, decision-making is not always very coherent. Hence, in 2005 the Government set up the National Roads Board, as an authority to coordinate road infrastructure programs. Besides the recurrent problems concerning project management and mobilization of local counterpart funds, the Project Owner cut off 174 km of farm-to-market roads from the 2 road projects financed, whereas this vision had been well received during the preparation of the CSP. The Borrower’s performance is thus unsatisfactory and it even adversely affects the Bank’s performance. Despite this missing aspect, the performance of Bank assistance remains satisfactory.

Main Lessons

• the Bank showed proof of inadequate appraisal of the role of related works and the comparative advantage they provide its assistance quality; it did not seek to ensure their effective implementation, leaving sole responsibility for them to the Borrower, which had difficulties mobilizing the resources from the PIB and HIPC, whereas these integrated works were eagerly awaited by the populations. Given that the CSP does not underscore this advantage, this innovation is not perceived as a strategic choice and irreversible option.

• Transport has structuring effects, but the Bank did not make proper use of the TAF instrument and take advantage of the works of the other donors, to prepare potential projects, with the private sector, whereas the successive CSPs repeatedly proposed the identification of enclave projects and operations with the private sector. The Bank-financed operations have demonstrated that it is possible to provide infrastructure in a coherent manner, at the same time as schools, health centres, cultural centres and minor viable agricultural projects. This innovative vision could thus enable the Bank to be perceived as a preferential donor, when it comes to infrastructures with a strong social impact, enabling the attainment of the MDGs, with optimized investment, better performance of the assistance and less waste of monitoring efforts.
   
• Cameroon is targeting a high overall road density, whereas 3/4 of its road traffic is concentrated on only 3 regions (out of 10) which hardly account for 1/3 of the national paved network. The Borrower is thus likely to err in making and weighting its investment options, thus ending up with works which are likely to be under-used. Such a strategy would not only affect Borrower performance, but would negatively impact the Bank’s performance.

Main Recommendations

Recommendations to the Bank :

• The Bank should shun minor projects and focus its strategy towards the financing of integrated and integrative infrastructure projects, which give its assistance a comparative advantage over other donors. Furthermore, in order not to jeopardize the value added obtained through this advantage to the projects which it finances, the Bank should include their costs in the share it finances and should attach as much importance to them as to the main work, in order to spare them the risks of unavailability of the local counterpart funds.

• The Bank should use the TAF to study the need to create an industrial and technological pole on the CNIC site. This technological centre would be shipbuilding and oil industry-oriented and could generate a fabric of SME specializing in subcontracting. UNIDO having already financed a study on enterprise nurseries in Cameroon, this approach by the Bank would also constitute an indirect means of mitigating the risk of the CNIC project and enhancing the competitiveness and sustainability of this major enclave project.

• The Bank should undertake relevance studies which would enable it to select the country’s absolute priorities, and choose only operations with the strongest inter-sector complementarities. The CSP should thus be very selective, in terms of targeting sectors and branches, but also projects, while taking into account their integrative capacity, their complementarities and their capacity to impact the matrix of economic activities and growth. As regards land transport, the country should rather give priority to the 3 areas where road traffic is concentrated, over any egalitarian considerations.