The government led by the Ministry of Public Works intends to revive and complete a project for the construction of 55 steel bridges in Cameroon that has been on hold for at least 24 months now. This was revealed in a video conference presided over by the Minister of Public Works (MINTP) Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi.
“In that regard,” the MINTP said “the financial partner (Société Générale-France) and the contractor (Ellipse France) will carry out a joint mission to review some prerequisites before the re-launch of the project on sites. The Ministry of Economy will also have to notify the financial partner of Cameroon’s intent to reactivate the credit line related to the project.”
Project overview
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The project entailed constructing 55 bridges in total, ranging from 27 to 150-m in length. 11 of the bridges in the Eastern region, nine in the North-West, seven in the West, seven others in the South, and five in the South Adamaoua and the Centre each. The South-West would get four, the Littoral three, the North and the Far North two each.
The modular prefabricated parts were to be fabricated by Acrow Corporation USA, a company based in Parsippany NJ that engineers and provides prefabricated modular bridges to Departments of Transportation, Engineering, and Construction Firms.
Work done so far
In April 2019, Geoffray Terrain, the project manager for Ellipse Projects, announced that 14 of the 55 bridges would be fully constructed in 2019 and five more by the end of March last year (2020).
However, during his address before the national assembly at the beginning of December 2020, the MINTP stated that the construction works on 17 of the 19 bridges were still 27% completed with only the Elogbatindi- Bipindi bridge in the Southern region of the West African country fully completed while construction works on two others would be launched once the credit line renewal procedures were completed.
