Cameroon - Bilateral Africa: Georesources in regional development planning
Country / Region: Cameroon / Africa
Focal Point: Soil
Begin of project: October 1, 2015
End of project: December 31, 2019
Status of project: June 24, 2020
Soil on young volcanic ashes above nutrient depleted red tropical earth
Source: BGR
Regional development and information on georesources
Regional development planning has been given little attention in the policy making of the Cameroonian government. High population growth and the increased demand for agricultural products on the global market have exacerbated the competition between different types of land use. This mainly includes conflicts between the protection of natural resources, biodiversity, and the economic exploitation of forests. In this context the state institutions intend to create mechanisms to harmonise the different interests in the future. Information deficits are a major stumbling block preventing progress in this regard. There is no interdisciplinary analysis of geospatial data – a very important parameter for regional development planning – in order to weigh up the ecological, social and economic advantages and disadvantages of various development options.
Partner organisations in Cameroon:
Political responsibility for the project is with the Ministry of Economy Planning and Regional Development which plays a co-ordinating role within the ministries in Cameroon in regional planning activities. Furthermore, the project is working closely with technical institutions, in particular with the State Research Institute for Agriculture (IRAD), the State Research Institute for Geology and Mining (IRGM) and the National Institute for Cartography (INC). Technical partners will also be assisted at a regional level, e.g. MEADEN, a regional development agency of MINEPAT in the North region.
The project
The aim of the project is to provide harmonised and quality-tested data, information and thematic maps on geo-resources to serve as the basis for decision making by the relevant authorities responsible for regional development planning. The focus here is on the geo-resource “soil”.
In close cooperation with technical partners, spatial data and information on soil and other geo-resources are prepared in the form of thematic maps. This material combined with explanatory information will be presented to decision makers as well as to civil society so that decisions can be based on information that is more reliable. The project goal is to improve the exchange of technical know-how between the geoscientific authorities and to enhance the ability of the political players to increasingly use quality-tested data and information in their political decision making processes.
In order to be able to provide geodata which is relevant to planning processes, already existing and free web based planning portals, which MINEPAT is setting up in cooperation with other donors, will be finally used as a dissemination tool. Thus, the partner will be enabled to develop political strategies to take into account technically and scientifically verified information on georesources in planning processes. At the same time, the information access for other actors within the sector will be improved, especially for the interested public. The project thus contributes to a more effective and transparent balancing of different land use interests and indirectly improves the legally provided political participation of the target groups. This makes it possible to better weigh up economic potential and ecological protection needs, to adopt a more sustainable approach (especially with respect to agriculture), and to reduce current conflicts on land use.
The project’s three main areas of intervention are as follows:
- Capacity building in the areas of digitalization and harmonisation of existing basic data, geographical information systems (GIS) and cartography for the creation of geoscientific maps and relational database systems for the geoscientific authorities.
- Capacity development by transferring technical and methodological competence especially in the field of soil as well as carrying out applied regional training studies on soil characterization and groundwater resources in cooperation with the technical partner organisations.
- Strengthening the technical capacities of users of geo-spatial information in applied regional development planning, at both national and regional level (MINEPAT).
Due to delayed planning processes within the current project, it is no longer possible to give advise on the quality of regional spatial planning plans regarding the consideration and relevance of geoscientific data as it has been defined as a former fourth field of intervention.
Intensive field trainings took place from November to December 2018 in the pilot region of Ngong, North Cameroon. The overall objective was to train state-of-the-art methods on soil classification in the field and laboratory according to international standards (World Reference Base for Soil Resources WRB, profile description according to FAO). The trainings were conducted and facilitated by BGR experts and international soil experts.
Based on the field and laboratory results the project aims in cooperation with the technical cooperation partner IRAD to develop methods in order to derive large-scale digital soil maps with a scale of 1:20.000 for the pilot region.
Training course state-of-the-art methods on soil classification according to international standards in the local authority district Ngong, north Cameroon
Source: BGR
With the new development program formation by the end of 2018, the development sector in which the project is integrated shifted from formerly “environmental policy, protection and sustainable use of natural resources” to “rural development”. As a result, the project can achieve more synergies with GIZ and KfW projects in the area of land use planning. Furthermore, the results of the project can be used within the second BGR project in Cameroon (ProSEP), which focus on “sustainable soil management”.
The persistently difficult and at times worsening security situation especially in the Southwest region (so-called anglophone crisis) has led to a concentration of project activities in the northern pilot zone. Nonetheless, the project aims whenever possible to include partners from the southwest within its capacity building activities.
The technical co-operation measure has a total duration of four years (10/2015 – 12/2019), and a financial volume of 3 million euros.
Project contributions:
Partner:
MINEPAT, Yaoundé
