Cameroon’s main port city faces growing flood risk

It’s the middle of the night in Cameroon’s largest port city, Douala, and the floodwaters are rising quickly and quietly.

Alerted by frightened neighbors, Hummel Tsafack hurriedly sends his children to safety and seizes some goods. A few minutes later, brackish water pours into the family home.

Floods are an annual hazard during the rainy season from July-September in Makepe-Missoke, a poor neighborhood in the heart of this city of more than three million inhabitants.

But, driven by suspicions of climate change and aggravated by urban planning and blocked pipes, such events have become more and more frequent.

“The television burned out, the refrigerator burned out,” sighed Tsafack, 35, after the latest flooding earlier this month. “Everything has been ransacked.

“As soon as we hear the thunder, we raise the beds,” said his neighbor François, a fifty-something. “Everyone here is scared. The water is rising so fast.”

The two men have a dull memory of a flood in the summer of 2020 which devastated the neighborhood and paralyzed the economic capital of Cameroon on the Atlantic coast.

Hummel Tsafack says the most recent flood a week ago was worse than the one in July. By Adrien MAROTTE (AFP)

François’ little house is soaked in humidity and none of his appliances are working. The concrete floor has holes in many places.

“We have patched this area seven times already. Every time there is a flood it breaks and we have to start over,” he said.

Population growth

“We moved here because it was cheaper. We are not going to move anymore,” said Francois, although the threatened neighborhood is located in a flood zone where construction is officially prohibited. People continue to settle there, driven by the lack of space in a city with a population growth rate of over 5.5% per year.

The gap is widening between demand and supply of available land as nearly 110,000 new arrivals per year seek to settle in Douala.

Even before climate change, Doula was already prone to rising waters.

The region boasts nearly 250 kilometers (155 miles) of inland waterways and abundant tropical rainfall that averages about 4,000 millimeters (157 inches) per year.

The city sits at the mouth of the Wouri River, on a low coastal plateau, and is influenced by the tides of the Atlantic Ocean.

François Bakakeu walks past his house after flood damage in July. By Adrien MAROTTE (AFP)

Weather data for the past 20 years shows a decrease in precipitation, but the overall decrease masks an increase in extreme weather events such as heavy precipitation.

UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) latest report says coastal cities are at the forefront of climate crisis, threatened by rising sea levels and storm surges .

The floods will displace millions of Africans over the next decades and, by 2050, inflict costs of up to $ 60 billion (€ 51 billion) per year in the 136 largest coastal cities, he predicts.

Plastic waste

But part of the impact of flooding also comes from environmental management.

The banks of the river in Makepe-Missoke are littered with plastic waste.

“Look at all the garbage that people here have thrown away,” said environmental specialist Didier Yimkwa.

“Add to that the silt and the spread of invasive plants that build up the river bed. When there is heavy rains, the water overflows,” he said.

To tackle the problem, the city has built around 40 kilometers (25 miles) of drains since 2012 and improved basic services in some neighborhoods, such as garbage collection.

But rubbish is littered all over the poor neighborhoods of Douala and the pipes are often clogged with plastic, preventing them from doing their job.

“It is estimated that 30% of waste ends up in nature,” Joseph Magloire Olinga, deputy director of research and environmental protection in Douala, told AFP.

“We need a serious change in land use when it comes to providing housing for people,” Olinga said.

“It means having a denser city center and building tall buildings – but in some areas developers have bought the land and don’t want to sell it.”

The authorities continue to allocate flood zones for construction projects.

Residents struggle with daily chores as flooding becomes more frequent in the port city of Douala. By Adrien MAROTTE (AFP)

“In neighborhoods like Makepe-Missoke, the goal is to build resilience – to live with the risk of flooding while minimizing it,” Olinga said.

“But what is certain is that some residents will also have to be moved because of the threat.”