Caught on Camera: Bertoua; The Emerging Green, Smart City in Cameroon

Bertoua

If you are environmentally conscious, you may consider visiting Bertoua, the Land of the Rising Sun is an earthly-friend city that has become the cornerstones to making a smart city a reality. The issue of global warming is on everyone’s mind these days. This is so because a sustainable city of the future must be green.

It has been proven that African and Asian cities have grown faster since 2000 than cities in any other part of the world. Studies have also shown that more than half of these continents’ populations are expected to live in cities by 2050. The shift from a rural- to an urban-dominant globe signals more strongly than ever the need to transform how cities develop. Architects, engineers, urban planners, civil society and policy makers face the challenges of creating sustainable, healthy, ‘smart’, ‘green’, adaptive, inclusive, productive, safe, flexible and resilient cities. These are just a few of the characteristics that will help urban centres thrive in the face of rising populations, growing informal settlements, pollution and environmental degradation, often combined with poor governance and service provision. Some cities around the world are pioneering the way, helping the development community envision alternatives to mainstream models of urban development, and focusing on creating environmentally friendly ‘cities for the people’, rather than economic growth. The capital of the East Region, Bertoua is an untouched town, located in the heart of the equatorial forest that booms with logging and mining. Yet, Bertoua from a first glance thrills the mind as a smart city.

In fact, the land of the rising sun a smartest city in Cameroon for now. Landscaping and planting of flowers seems to have a peculiar place in the peoples’ ways of living.  It's definitely worth a splurge if you've been lost in the forest. Up graded into a City council on January 12, 2008 by presidential decree No. 2008/016, Bertoua is the capital of the East Region and of Lom/ Djerem Division. It has a population of 88,462 (per the 2005 Census), and is the traditional home of the Gbaya people. It is a border town that shares common boundaries with Central African Republic.  It is logical that a city filled with motorized vehicle, a large number of people and a very rich small traditional industry is bound to have a bad air quality.

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