Modernisation of decentralised local authorities: Digitalisation at the heart of a long-awaited transformation

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Meeting in Yaoundé on 22 and 23 April 2025 at the Palais des Congrès, Cameroon's decentralisation stakeholders discussed the challenges of digitising the local government authorities (communes, urban communities and regions). It's an ambitious project, hampered by technical, energy and financial constraints, but one that holds great promise for local governance.

• For the Minister for Decentralisation and Local Development (MINDDEVEL), Georges ELANGA OBAM, the ambition is for decentralisation to produce real local development. This is why the government has been working in recent years to methodically accelerate and deepen the decentralisation process.
• For Augustin TAMBA, President of the Association of Communes and Towns United in Cameroon (CVUC), the project to digitise Cameroon's communes has multiple objectives, namely to ensure territorial marketing both internally and internationally, and to popularise what is being done by the CTDs.

Key figures

• 82% of communes have no web presence.
• The main services for Cameroon's 384 local authorities are: easy, user-friendly civil registration, and modernised financial management,