Employment Impact Assessment of the Logone Bridge Project in Cameroon

For a summary of the report and its main findings, please see the Information Brief below.

A key task of the ILO STRENGTHEN2 project is to conduct employment impact assessments of investments in sub-Saharan Africa, with the aim of promoting the creation of more and better jobs. The EU, the African Development Bank (AfDB), the African Development Fund (ADF), the Transition Support Facility (TSF) and the Government of Cameroon have committed €112.8 million to the Lake Chad Basin Regional Road Network Integration project, also known as the Logone Bridge project. Of this, the African Development Bank Group funded a total €66.12 million mostly in loans while the EU has provided €40 million in grants (AfDB, 2017).

This report presents an Employment Impact Assessment (EmpIA) of the first two objectives of the Logone Bridge project focusing on the construction of the Logone bridge and the connecting road between Yagoua in Cameroon and Bongor in Chad. Direct employment data were collected at the construction site through interviews with the companies providing supervision (referred to jointly as the “control mission”), with the two successful bidders for the project—RAZEL for the bridge and SOTCOCOG for the road—and with employees of all these enterprises. Non-direct employment effects were estimated, including indirect and induced employment effects using Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) multipliers approach, and temporary employment (combining indirect and induced employment effects together with supply constraints and price adjustments) and permanent employment effects (assuming productivity gain in the transport sector) using the Structural Model for Sustainable Development (SMSD).

According to the control mission report for the period from May to July 2023, the Logone Bridge project has created a cumulative total of 523 direct jobs since the start of this project. By the time the construction is completed in July 2024, the number of direct jobs created at the project site could be higher. A total of 198 workers were interviewed during a field visit (from November to December 2023). Data from the field assessment have provided insights into the quality of work and employment conditions. Most workers reported having employment contracts, and even many of the temporary workers had contracts with an average duration of 13 months, indicating some degree of job security. In addition, all companies have demonstrated a commitment to local recruitment—with a large proportion of workers being recruited from the project sites in the two host countries.

Model estimates suggest that the Logone Bridge project could offer an additional 7,515 to 8,827 non-direct full-time equivalent (FTE) jobs according to the SAM multipliers and SMSD analyses. This corresponds to approximately 133 (according to the SAM multipliers analysis) to 156 (according to SMSD) FTE jobs per million euros invested. Most of the non-direct jobs are in wholesale and retail trade, and these non-direct jobs are biased against female and youth, but favour formal workers.

This report highlights the importance of local procurement and local recruitment in bringing the benefits of the project to the place where the project is being implemented. It therefore recommends that 1) locally sourced inputs, locally recruited labour, and having a pre-agreed minimum wage (ideally higher than the legal national minimum wage) paid to the workers could be part of the bidding requirements during the project tendering process; 2) a female employment target (for example, 30 per cent) can also be added into the recruitment policy; 3) on-the-job training should be automatically included as part of the employment contract to foster continuity of the employment after the end of the construction; 4) the promotion of a labour-based approach; and 5) an adequate monitoring process of the socio-economic aspects of the project to provide jobs for local people where the employment opportunities are desperately needed.