Decentralized Rural Electrification Project in Cameroon
Cameroon is a rural country. More than 70 percent of its people live in rural areas. In 1995, of 13,000 villages in Cameroon, only about 1,500 were connected to the national electricity grid. Most of Cameroon's 12.2 million inhabitants lack ac...
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| Format: | ESMAP Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
Washington, DC
2014
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2005/12/10345703/decentralized-rural-electrification-project-cameroon http://hdl.handle.net/10986/18061 |
| Summary: | Cameroon is a rural country. More than
70 percent of its people live in rural areas. In 1995, of
13,000 villages in Cameroon, only about 1,500 were connected
to the national electricity grid. Most of Cameroon's
12.2 million inhabitants lack access to electricity. Only
about 5 percent of all households have electricity. About 35
percent of urban households have electricity, but in rural
areas this figure is less than 1 percent. Data are lacking
on the number of rural clinics and schools with
refrigeration and electricity or the number of villages with
access to (electric) pumping facilities. The distribution of
electricity in Cameroon is limited, and the growth of new
subscribers is slow. New connections are only made in high
load areas such as towns and industrial establishments,
where grid extension is a cost-effective solution. But even
in the peri-urban areas, thousands of consumers are not
connected and use lead-acid batteries to run their
televisions and lights. To extend the grid to rural areas
would require a significant increase in investment just to
keep up with population growth. Given the problems that the
urban-based grid systems already experience, it is unlikely
that most of the rural population and institutions, under
current policies, will get electricity in the next 20-40 years. |
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