Cameroon Opens Mayo Taram Bridge After Long Delays on Key Regional Road

Cameroon has officially opened the Mayo Taram bridge in Banyo, removing a vulnerable crossing on a key road between the West and Adamawa regions after a project that took far longer than initially planned.

Public Works Minister Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi officially commissioned the Acrow steel bridge on August 31, 2026. Located on National Road No. 6, it provides a safer crossing over the Mayo Taram River on the Foumban-Tibati-Ngaoundéré route.

The bridge, however, had already been open to traffic for more than seven months. It was provisionally accepted on January 23, 2026, before the official ceremony. The contract awarded to Nan Company Limited, with Africa Engineering Consulting (AE Consult SA) supervising the work, was worth exactly CFA847,425,267 including taxes. It was financed through the Public Works Ministry’s public investment budget for 2023 and subsequent years.

The contract covered earthworks, foundations and abutments, road and shoulder construction, drainage, transportation and assembly of the bridge deck, as well as road signs and safety equipment.

The CFA847.4 million does not represent the full historical cost of the infrastructure. The steel components had already been supplied under the Acrow bridge program. The amount therefore covers construction, assembly and access works financed by the Cameroonian government.

The 51.67-meter bridge consists of a single span with a steel truss deck. It has a seven-meter-wide roadway and a 1.5-meter sidewalk. The structure rests on two abutments supported by 12 reinforced-concrete piles, while access roads extend about 100 meters on either side.

The project faced significant delays. The notice to begin work was issued in March 2023, with the effective restart announced on May 31 that year. By May 28, 2024, only 7.15% of the work had been completed even though 140.2% of the contractual time had already elapsed, according to Public Works Ministry data.

Construction was eventually completed in November 2025. The bridge was provisionally accepted in January 2026 before its official opening seven months later.

The new crossing should improve traffic flow and reduce disruptions caused by flooding on a route that connects western Cameroon with Adamawa. However, the ministry has not published estimates of expected traffic, travel-time savings or potential reductions in transport costs. The economic benefits therefore remain to be measured.

The Mayo Taram bridge belongs to a program that dates further back than 2019, the year sometimes cited as its starting point. In December 2014, the Export-Import Bank of the United States approved a $50 million loan guarantee to finance exports to Cameroon of 55 steel bridge kits made by Acrow.

Installation of the bridges was halted in June 2019 after disbursement deadlines expired for part of the financing.

To restart the program, the government used its public investment budget to fund a group of nine bridges. The nine projects therefore do not represent a permanent reduction of the original 55-bridge program. Within this group, Mayo Taram joins completed bridges over the Mama River in the East region and the Ngoum River in Kékem in the West. The completed Bella bridge in the South belongs to an earlier phase of the program.

Six other bridges in the group were still under construction according to a Public Works Ministry update on May 25, 2026: Bangue in Yokadouma, at 45.57 meters; Mvila in Ma’an, 154.86 meters; Mboro in Ma’an, 112.34 meters; Nlobo in Meyos, 109.43 meters; Didim in Mekomo, 45.57 meters; and Tédé in Nkolwono, 36.43 meters.

Their schedules remain uncertain. Work on the Bangue bridge had been suspended because the project site had not been cleared, while the Mvila bridge was only 15.53% complete after 227.4% of its contractual timeframe had elapsed.

The government has also awarded contracts for 11 additional bridges in the Adamawa, North, East, Center and West regions. Eight contracts were awarded in November 2025, two in May 2026 and the final one, for the Mayo Lidi bridge, on August 18, 2026.

The 11 contracts have a combined value of CFA18.66 billion, based on calculations from decisions published by the Public Procurement Regulatory Agency. That is CFA318.1 million, or 1.7%, below the estimated total cost of CFA18.98 billion.

The projects are scheduled to take between 18 and 24 months and will be financed through the 2026-2028 budgets. At this stage, however, their planned completion dates cannot yet be treated as firm.

Frédéric Nonos