Transport and infrastructure in Cameroon

Our listing of the primary types of transport compares the infrastructure of Cameroon with the average of all countries in Africa. The traffic routes have noticeable defects in many places and are often not in particularly good condition.

In terms of the length of its rail network, Cameroon ranks 117th in the world with 0.04 meters per inhabitant. In total, the rail network is 987 kilometers long. Freight traffic on the rails most recently totaled 874.05 million tons and kilometers traveled. Passenger traffic reached 225.37 million passenger-kilometers in 2020.

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Back to overview: Cameroon

Road traffic

The network of roads and highways has a total length of 77,589 km. For each of the country's 27.20 million inhabitants, this corresponds to 2.85 meters. This puts Cameroon in 147th place in the global ranking. However, it is also important to note that the country's population density is very low at around 57 inhabitants per km². In this case, disproportionately long distances generally have to be covered to reach the more remote parts of the country.

With an average of 7204 traffic fatalities per year (2013 - 2019), road traffic in Cameroon is considered quite dangerous. This corresponds to 29.4 accident fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants per year. By comparison, this figure is 12.3 in the USA and 17.0 worldwide.

In Cameroon, traffic drives on the right-hand side of the road, i.e. people drive in the right-hand lane and overtake on the left. Oncoming traffic comes toward you on the left side. This regulation was enforced in January 1st, 1970. Regionally, this also applied before, now it exists for all parts of the country. Here you can also find an overview of all countries with left-hand traffic.

	total	per 1 mio inhabitants	per km²
	Cameroon
Roadways	77,600 km	2,852.68 km	163.19 m
Railroads	1,000 km	36.29 km	2.08 m
Waterways	0 km	0.00 km	0.00 m
Commercial harbors	121	4.45	0.000
Airports	6	0.22	0.013

	total	per 1 mio inhabitants	per km²
	Africa
Roadways	2,997,800 km	2,151.40 km	98.86 m
Railroads	88,600 km	63.57 km	2.92 m
Waterways	68,400 km	49.09 km	2.26 m
Commercial harbors	7,949	5.70	0.000
Airports	413	0.30	0.000

Data sources used

• Global Health Observatory Data Repository (World Health Organization)
• UNCTAD
• Internation Union of Railways (UIC)
• CIA Factbook
• OECD Statistics
• Wikipedia (german)

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