Road Infrastructural Development and Traffic Patterns in Bamenda - A Cameroonian Medium City

Road mode of transport dominates African and Cameroonian cities but unequally developed to portray sturdy spatio-temporal variation trends.This assessment of the negative development ramifications of traffic congestion along road axis of Bamendais carried out through a sample survey of road users from September to October 2014. Field observation and sampling on traffic trend variables indicate that technical factors play over infrastructural variables to trigger mobility flow bottlenecks and trends. Statistical treatment of primary and secondary data depictunequal daily/seasonal variation with distance from city centre being higher in the rainy season and school periods than dry seasons and holidays. Traffic flow and congestion is higher along the NE than NW road axis with significant socio-economic consequences road users such as weakening of income, lateness, emotional and psychological stress, accidents, material damageas well aspollution. This study opts for a holistic approach to mitigate traffic problems using structural and non-structuralmeasures

Floods in the Douala metropolis, Cameroon : attribution to changes in rainfall characteristics or planning failures?

With urban populations worldwide expected to witness substantial growth over the next decades, pressure on urban land and resources is projected to increase in response. For policy-makers to adequately meet the challenges brought about by changes in the dynamics of urban areas, it is important to clearly identify and communicate their causes. Floods in Douala (the most densely populated city in the central African sub-region), are being associated chiefly with changing rainfall patterns, resulting from climate change in major policy circles. We investigate this contention using statistical analysis of daily rainfall time-series data covering the period 1951–2008, and tools of geographic information systems. Using attributes such as rainfall anomalies, trends in the rainfall time series, daily rainfall maxima and rainfall intensity–duration–frequency, we find no explanation for the attribution of an increase in the occurrences and severity of floods to changing rainfall patterns. The culprit seems to be the massive increase in the population of Douala, in association with poor planning and investment in the city's infrastructure. These demographic changes and poor planning have occurred within a physical geography setting that is conducive for the inducement of floods. Failed urban planning in Cameroon since independence set the city up for a flood-prone land colonization. This today translates to a situation in which large portions of the city's surface area and the populations they harbor are vulnerable to the city's habitual annual floods. While climate change stands to render the city even more vulnerable to floods, there is no evidence that current floods can be attributed to the changes in patterns of rainfall being reported in policy and news domains

DEVELOPING URBAN WATER RESOURCES AND CONTAMINATION RISKS ON THE POPULATION OF CAMEROON: A BAMENDA EXAMPLE

This study identifies springs and streams in Bamenda as well as their contamination risk through physico-chemical and bacteriological pollution form waste disposal and catchment sources degradation by human activities in an urban setting with advanced drinking water scarcity in the dry season. There are no control measures to maximize water resources exploitation for the general welfare. The study uses primary and secondary data from field and laboratory analysis to identify the pollution sources to be tied to fishing, crop irrigation, sand extraction, waste disposal, dress washing, bathing, drinking and bike and car washing. Percentage pollution was 18.5 for springs and 23.62 for streams and largely free from, E. coli and salmonella coliforms, while Staphylococci coliform bacterial contamination ranged from 100 to 110 CFU/mL for springs and 600 to 675 CFU/mL for the streams. Some mitigating suggestions have been made