Cameroun leads central Africa in AFD financing with 623 billion FCFA in 2025

In 2025, Cameroon has secured nearly 30% of the French Development Agency (AFD) group’s total portfolio in Central Africa. The agency’s annual report highlights commitments amounting to €949.6 million—approximately 623 billion FCFA—spread across 51 ongoing projects. This places Yaoundé ahead of Kinshasa (€741.4 million), Libreville (€646.3 million), Brazzaville (€484.9 million), N’Djamena (€308.7 million), and Bangui (€144.7 million).

The breakdown by entity reveals the structure of this financial commitment. The AFD itself accounts for €875.8 million, its private-sector arm Proparco mobilizes €61.8 million, while Expertise France contributes €12 million. Within the AFD’s portfolio alone, Cameroon captures 30.7% of a regional total worth €2.8 billion as of December 31, 2025.

Urban development and infrastructure: the backbone of AFD’s strategy

The French lender’s regional approach prioritizes large-scale infrastructure. The report underscores that infrastructure development remains central to its intervention in Central Africa, citing the Nachtigal hydroelectric dam in Cameroon and the modernization of the Transgabonais railway as flagship initiatives. This focus is evident in the agency’s 2025 commitments on Cameroonian soil.

On this front, infrastructure and urban development absorb 44.2% of the financing. Support for private financial institutions follows, representing 35.9% of the total, ahead of governance (6.8%), education, training, and employment (6.4%), the productive sector (2.9%), water and sanitation (2.2%), and agriculture and food security (1.7%). Among the standout projects is the initiative to combat flooding in Yaoundé and Douala, designed to reduce exposure to recurring climate events in the country’s two largest cities.

This sectoral distribution reflects the country’s persistent infrastructure gaps and the long-standing financial cooperation between Cameroon and France. It also signals a deliberate choice: concentrating resources where they can most effectively lower logistics and energy costs for businesses and households alike.

The debt-driven financial structure

The composition of instruments deployed in 2025 offers key insights for budget analysts. Sovereign loans dominate, accounting for 33.9% of the total. They are followed by senior loans (23.2%), Debt Reduction and Development Contracts (C2D) (16.2%), guarantees (12.6%), credits delegated by the European Union (7.1%), grants (6.3%), and Technical Expertise and Experience Exchange Funds (FEXTE) (0.6%).

In other words, over half of the funding takes the form of repayable instruments. This reality highlights that Cameroon’s position as the top regional beneficiary comes with a future debt service burden, the sustainability of which will hinge on the economic returns of the underlying projects. While C2Ds, guarantees, EU credits, and grants soften this profile, they do not alter its dominant structure.

In the private sector, Proparco has financed Prometal, described in the report as a catalyst for industrialization and local transformation. Meanwhile, programs like SeptentrionEst and SECAL target rural resilience, entrepreneurship, and food security in northern regions—areas particularly vulnerable to climate and security shocks.

From financial leadership to economic impact

Cameroon’s leading position in AFD’s books is a financial milestone, not an economic verdict. While the agency’s report aggregates results from projects closed between 2020 and 2025 in sectors like agriculture, health, education, and sanitation, these figures do not isolate the specific impact of Cameroon’s portfolio on productivity, urban services, or private investment growth.

For Cameroonian authorities, the real test lies in execution. The quality of project implementation, the delivery of infrastructure, its operational efficiency, and its ability to reduce economic costs will determine the ultimate return on these 623 billion FCFA. Retaining the top regional portfolio ranking matters less than proving, with concrete data, that these commitments are transforming the productive sector and essential services for citizens.