Poor waste management: When Yaounde suffocates, country is hospitalised!.

Yaounde, the City of Seven Hills, as The Guardian Post exhibited yesterday with pictures that speak more than a thousand words, has become a pictogram of shame and “the garbage city," a moniker acquired in the mid-1910s, due to the mountains of garbage that littered every street corner of the capital. Decades later, the slush remains.

Of the 54 countries in Africa, environmentalists have ranked Yaounde among the 15 dirtiest cities in the continent, yet it is generously blessed with abundant natural resources and manpower.

But what went wrong? The Yaounde City Council has the responsibility to coordinate municipal waste management, drainage maintenance and public hygiene infrastructure across the capital's seven councils.

Other duties of municipal councils include to oversee major sewage drainage, canal maintenance to mitigate urban flooding and climate risks.

Accompanying the councils in these responsibilities is HYSACAM, a private sanitation operator. 

Its workers are even known to have gone on strike on some occasions for non-payment of salaries, which compounded the crushing heaps of filth that block roads and pollute the environment, adding to the health problems of inhabitants.

The powers that be in Yaounde are not unaware of the garbage of shame the capital has survived in it for years. 

When the Prime Minister, Head of Government, Dr Chief Joseph Dion Ngute, inaugurated the headquarters of the Directorate General of Taxes, on November 27, 2020, he urged the City Mayor to give the capital city a more welcoming image.

"I am taking advantage of this ceremony to call upon the mayor of Yaounde to act responsibly. It is time our capital stopped resembling an open-air slum with haphazard construction, dilapidated roads, and rampant unsanitary conditions," he had stated. 

Six anxious years after, the capital city's appearance remains unchanged as the city mayor and his peers of seven of the Subdivisional councils are instead in a war over whose jurisdiction it is to keep the city an environmental Eldorado.

Today, the situation remains unchanged; with potholes puncturing streets and mountains of trash on every corner blocking traffic and pedestrians as the city reeks of a stench reminiscent of decomposing animals.

The Ministry of Territorial Administration, MINAT, joined the fray, with Minister Atanga Nji launching the “Yaounde Clean City” campaign, warning that anyone caught littering the city will be severely punished.

To facilitate the task, he distributed 700 wheelbarrows, 700 trowels, 700 brooms, and 700 rakes to the seven municipal councils and instructed administrative authorities to supervise waste disposal and work with municipal officials to ensure proper garbage disposal through weekly street inspections.

Minister Atanga Nji emphasised that waste management is a collective responsibility and sensitisation campaigns will educate the public on proper waste practices.

The Senior Divisional Officers, SDOs and Divisional Officers, DOs were instructed to conduct weekly inspections to identify unauthorised dumping sites and sanction violators.

Collection companies have been told to ensure collection of household garbage is done mainly between midnight and 6 a.m.

The campaign aims to place administrative authorities at the forefront of the fight against urban disorder in Yaounde.

The Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Célestine Ketcha Courtes, also gave two cleaning trucks to councils in Yaounde.

Unfortunately, all the ministerial interventions, combined with the work of waste management companies, HYSACAM and Thychlov Ltd, are doing, have been unable to keep Yaounde clean.

The gestures were made by the ministries as a prelude to the visit to Cameroon of Pope Leo last April.

But it appears when the Pope left, everyone forgot about hygiene. Yaounde is once again menacingly confronted with a paramount sanitation crisis. Mountains of garbage are invading the streets and intersections of several neighbourhoods.

The situation highlights the limitations of the waste collection system and poses serious risks to public health in the capital city.

If Yaounde, the apple of the nation, is as filthy and mocking as it is, suffocated and not  breathing clean air, how do the powers that be expect the other cities like Douala, Bafoussam, Bamenda, Garoua etc to be?  

Why do the authorities have to wait until there is a visiting personality like the Pope or an international event like hosting the African Nations football competition, before getting up from a sleep of to clean the city?

Why are ruling CPDM party officials now wearing nose masks, before boasting about “Greatness and Hope,” when an elementary responsibility like cleaning the streets of the nation’s capital has been a daunting task for both ministries to councils?

The Minister of Housing and Urban Development has intervened with no solution, so has her peer of Territorial Administration.

The Prime Minister, Head of Government; who resides near the Municipal Lake, which is also filthy, despite billions spent to make it a tourist gem, smells the stench too. He has intervened, yet, there is no solution in sight.

The Guardian Post can say it without mincing words that President Biya, in whose executive desk the buck ends, is fully aware of the grubby situation of downtown Yaounde.

We can however vouch that as a man who acts more than he speaks, if he drives round the city of Yaounde, disguised and unannounced, he too will intervene to make Yaounde a capital city that breathes, so the country can at least giggle.

This article was first published in The Guardian Post Edition No:3890 of Wednesday August 26, 2026