CAMEROON’S INFRASTRUCTURE: A CONTINENTAL PERSPECTIVE dependent on natural resources, it will be benchmarked against other resource-rich economies in Africa as well as against middle-income countries. Detailed comparisons will also be made with immediate regional neighbors in Central Africa.

Several methodological issues should be borne in mind. First, because of the cross-country nature of data collection, a time lag is inevitable. The period covered by the AICD runs from 2001 to 2010. Most technical data presented are for 2008 (or the most recent year available), while financial data are typically averaged over 2001–06 to smooth out the effect of short-term fluctuations. Second, in order to make comparisons across countries, indicators were standardized so that analyses were done on a consistent basis. This means that some of the indicators presented here may be slightly different from those that are routinely reported and discussed at the country level.

# Why infrastructure matters

Between 2002 and 2009 Cameroon’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew about 3 percent per year. This economic performance falls short of the 7 percent mark needed to make a significant impact on poverty reduction and below the average growth rate of 6.2 percent for Sub Saharan Africa.

The overall contribution of telecommunications, electricity, and roads to Cameroon’s per capita growth between 2000 and 2005 was 1.05 percentage points, mostly attributed to a faster accumulation of infrastructure assets than to improvements in infrastructure quality. As elsewhere, the ICT sector was responsible for most of the contribution, adding 1.26 percentage points to the per capita growth rate. The power sector held back per capita growth by –0.28 percentage points (figure 1a). The dead weight of power on Cameroon’s economy is close to three times the negative effect that power deficiencies represented for Africa as a whole during the same period.

Infrastructure’s contribution to economic growth in Cameroon was higher than in other Central Africa countries (figure 1a). But in the larger Sub-Saharan African context, infrastructure development led to faster growth per capita in Sudan (1.76 percent), Botswana (1.66 percent), Mauritius (1.67 percent), Benin (1.63 percent), and Uganda (1.54 percent).

Looking ahead, if Cameroon improves its infrastructure to the level of the middle-income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, growth performance could be enhanced by as much as 3.3 percentage points per capita (figure 1b).<sup>1</sup> Most of the potential growth would come from the power sector (1.26 percentage points), in particular by increasing its generation capacity and national access rates. ICT would continue making an important contribution to economic prospects (1.25 percentage points),provided the expansion of mobile and internet markets continues. Improving the condition of road corridors would facilitate and increase trade with neighbors, boosting economic growth not only in Cameroon but also in landlocked countries such as Chad and the Central African Republic.

> 1The countries that are closer to Mauritius will show the smallest infrastructure gap and will, therefore, have the smallest growth benefits.

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