Cameroon is advancing its administrative modernisation strategy. The authorities in Yaoundé are looking for 163 million US dollars—nearly 90 billion CFA francs at current exchange rates—to finance the digitalisation of decentralised territorial collectivities (CTDs). The initiative aims to equip municipalities and regions with digital tools that can streamline the management of local public services in a state that counts over 360 communes and ten regions.
A strategic fund for Cameroon’s decentralisation
This financing need builds on the General Code for Decentralised Territorial Collectivities adopted in 2019, a foundational text that reshaped local governance architecture. Since then, the transfer of powers to communes and regions has accelerated, though technical means have not always kept pace. Digitalisation appears as a lever to close the gap between expanded prerogatives and still uneven operational capacities.
Concretely, the sought funds are to cover the implementation of administrative management platforms, the dematerialisation of civil registration documents, the computerisation of revenue collection offices, and the connection of municipal executives to central state information systems. For local authorities often facing low tax mobilisation, the budgetary aspect is critical: better revenue collection through digital means underpins the financial autonomy promised by decentralisation.
Financing raises questions of digital sovereignty
The choice of technical and financial partners will be a marker. In recent years, Cameroon has multiplied cooperation with multilateral donors such as the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and the French Development Agency on e‑governance projects. At the same time, Beijing has become an indispensable supplier of telecom infrastructure, notably through the national backbone deployed in partnership with Huawei.
For a project touching citizens’ data and the local administrative chain, the question of sovereign hosting is acute. The country adopted a legal framework on cybersecurity and data protection as early as 2010, but operational enforcement remains imperfect. Digitalising the CTDs will require decisions between locally hosted solutions, foreign cloud providers, or hybrid architectures—each option carrying consequences for cost, resilience, and control.
Regional comparisons offer useful benchmarks. Rwanda has made Irembo a showcase for digitalising public services down to the administrative sector level. Senegal has launched a similar strategy via its General Delegation for Digital Transformation. Benin, meanwhile, has implemented a single window for administrative formalities that inspires several Central African neighbours.
Operational challenges beyond funding
Mobilising 163 million USD will not guarantee the project’s success. The digital divide remains pronounced in Cameroon, with rural areas still poorly served by fibre optic and 4G. The Telecommunications Regulatory Agency (ART) and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications will need to align the rollout of municipal digital services with the expansion of connectivity infrastructure, otherwise inequalities between metropolitan areas and hinterlands may widen.
Training local government staff is another blind spot. Without personnel skilled in using tools, basic maintenance, and elementary cybersecurity, hardware investments risk limited impact. Several technical partners now insist on coupling equipment projects with multi‑year capacity‑building components.
Finally, the timeline remains unclear. The Cameroonian government has not yet publicly communicated a precise schedule for mobilising the funds or a definitive list of donors approached. The actual pace of the work will shape the credibility of a decentralisation presented as a major axis of state modernisation.
