The market concerning the supply and installation of 21,500 streetlights for the benefit of 360 municipalities raises questions about both the procedure and the prices.
At the request of the Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Célestine Ketcha Courtes, the Presidency of the Republic of Cameroon has given her the go-ahead to award a contract worth 21.4 billion CFA francs to the company SUNNA DESIGN. This direct award contract relates to the supply and installation of 21,500 solar streetlights in the 360 municipalities as part of Phase 1 of the project, according to a letter from the Minister of State, Secretary-General of the Presidency of the Republic, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, addressed to the Minhdu.
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While the project to electrify municipalities is to be welcomed, the procedure for awarding the contract and the price raise questions. The Head of State authorizes the direct award procedure, which bypasses public transparency and competition. This procedure is often used in exceptional cases, particularly during crises, and is authorized here in ordinary times. Furthermore, in this contract, a solar streetlight would cost approximately 995,348 CFA francs.
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However, in 2024, SUNNA DESIGN, a company specializing in solar electrification, announced the successful deployment of 30,000 solar streetlights for the electrification of rural areas in Togo, a West African country. This represented the first phase of a project to supply, install, and maintain 50,000 intelligent solar streetlights in 4,600 rural areas for a total cost of 40 million euros, or 26,238,280,000 CFA francs. A solar streetlight under this contract in Togo cost 526,000 CFA francs, almost half the cost of a streetlight under the contract in Cameroon. This raises the question of why there is such a price difference for the execution of a similar contract.
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