Douala City Council revises land-use plans, anticipates rise in demographic.

It was organised at the Akwa Banquet Hall. This was under the chairmanship of the Douala City Mayor, Dr Roger Mbassa Ndine. 

The ceremony brought together municipal authorities, urban planning experts, civil society organisations and institutional stakeholders.

The City Mayor said Douala’s Master Urban Development Plan known in its French acronym PDU and Plans of Land Occupation, POS, adopted in 2015 were designed to provide a global framework for urban development and an operational tool for land management. 

Ten years later, he said the documents have shown their limits as population density surges. According to the City Mayor, the 2015 plans did not anticipate the scale of the city’s current growth. 

“The latest land-use plans did not foresee Douala becoming a city of five million inhabitants. Today, the problems we are facing are of a completely different magnitude. We must now project ourselves into a Douala of 8 to 10 million inhabitants,” Dr Mbassa Ndine stated.

He added that rapid population growth, increasing land pressure, rising property prices, zoning inconsistencies and multiple derogations have made a revision inevitable. 

The City Mayor laid special emphasis on Douala VI Subdivision, the Manoka Islands which have been facing major environmental challenges. 

Noting that Manoka Islands are an integral part of the Wouri Division, the City Mayor said its development should be taken into consideration in the future.

Revising the land-use plans, the City Mayor said, is not just a technical update, but a forward-looking exercise.

“Planning means anticipating. We must plan the infrastructure, equipment, mobility systems and services needed so that millions of people can live in a pleasant environment,” he explained.

Dr Mbassa Ndine noted that land prices are constantly rising, stressing that no city in the world experiences a decline in land value. 

As Douala becomes increasingly attractive to investors, he said, new pressures are emerging which must be managed through coherent planning.

The revised POS for 2025, introduced for the first time by officials of the department Urban Planning at the City Council presented a clearly articulated strategic vision built around three main pillars. 

The pillars include a rational land use management; environmental protection and reduction of urban risks and strengthening Douala’s economic and international role.

The vision projects Douala, by 2035, as “a radiant, well-structured metropolis with functional multimodal mobility, an attractive city offering a high-quality living environment while protecting its natural ecosystem.”

The department outlined a comparative analysis between the 2015 plans and the revised 2025 version, highlighting improvements in zoning coherence, risk-area management, infrastructure planning and alignment with national and local policies such as Vision 2035 and the National Development Strategy 2020–2030, SND30.

The Director of Urban Planning, Development and Mobility at the Douala City Council, Jean Daniel Ebonguè, emphasised that the process remains open. 

“Nothing is finalised yet. Initial work has been done with social and professional groups, but this phase allows us to confront the proposals with the aspirations of the population,” he said.

One of the major innovations announced, is the reintegration of river transport into the city’s mobility system.

“The previous plans practically turned their backs on river transport, yet Douala is a city crossed by waterways. Today, we want to position river transport as a major mode of mobility,” the City Mayor told reporters.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3668 of Friday January 09, 2026