Commercial Motorbikes and Intra-Urban Transport in Mbouda Town -West Region of Cameroon

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume III, Issue VII, July 2019 | ISSN 2454–6186

Commercial Motorbikes and Intra-Urban Transport in Mbouda Town -West Region of Cameroon

Sop Sop Maturin Desiré¹, Abossolo Samuel Aimé², Mofo Tiogoung Jonathan¹
University of Bamenda¹, University of Yaoundé I²

Abstract: – In Cameroon, before the civil unrest of the early 1990s that retarded economic activities and development in the whole country, urban transport was an absolute monopoly of township taxis. During the unrest, circulation of vehicles was prohibited by protesters and only bikes were permitted to circulate in towns. That was probably the unnoticed spark that developed into a new urban transport system. In Mbouda town, after the unrest, taxis resurfaced and functioned together with the motorbikes. As time went on, the competition became stiff and by the year 2000, taxis were very scarce in Mbouda. In 2010, the taxis had completely disappeared from the urban transport sector in Mbouda and gave way to commercial motobikes. This study, therefore calls for the need to understand the stages of the evolution of the transport system in Mbouda. Equally, there is the need to understand the socio-economic impacts of the activity in the area. Primary and secondary data were used in the study and it was found out that the intra-urban transport sector in Mbouda slumbers in informality. The commercial motorbike riders function like outlaw citizens. The town thus needs a complete re-organisation of the sector, as well as the proper implementation of the laws and texts governing the activity.

Keywords: Commercial – Motorbikes- Urban – Transport- Mbouda -Cameroon

I. INTRODUCTION

In Cameroon, urban transport was formerly a monopoly of township taxis painted in yellow. A decline in organized public transport systems has led to rapid growth in non-conventional means of public transport, initially provided by minibuses and shared taxi/vans, and more recently by commercial motorbikes. With the absence of communal transport facilities and the poor urban transport systems, more adaptive modes of urban transport like the use of motorcycles became common in Buea town (Fombe and Balgah, 2012). Commercial motorbikes came up as a transport system in Mbouda in the early 1990s when there was civil unrest in most towns of the country. The use of motorbikes for commercial transport ignited and later gained grounds just like in other parts of Cameroon. There is the need to attempt an understanding of the evolutionary stages of the activity in Mbouda urban area, the efforts carried out by the central and local governments in an attempt to regularize the sector, the challenges as well as the impact of the activity in the municipality. Therefore, the research questions of this study are: What are the trends of commercial motorbikes in Mbouda town? What efforts were carried out by the central and local governments in an attempt to regularize the sector? What are the problems faced by the sector and what impact does the transportation activity have on the local population?

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