Douala, Kamerun

Port Infrastructure

Douala is situated on the southeastern shore of the Wouri River estuary, on the Atlantic coast about 130 miles (210 km) west of Yaoundé. The Wouri Bridge, 5,900 feet (1,800 m) long, joins Douala to the banana port of Bonabéri and carries both road and rail traffic to western Cameroon.

The city is connected by road to all major towns in Cameroon, has rail links to Kumba, Nkongsamba, Yaoundé, and Ngaoundéré, and is served by an international airport.

One of the major industrial centres of central Africa, Douala houses breweries, textile factories, and palm-oil, soap, and food-processing plants. It also produces building materials, metalwork, plastics, glass, paper, bicycles, and timber products. Other activities include boat and ship repairing, railway engineering, and radio assembly. Offshore reserves of natural gas had not been exploited by the mid-1990s.

Douala port is located 24km up stream on the left hand bank on the River Wouri.

Douala is mainly an export port for timber, cocoa, coffee, bananas, cotton and aluminium. Douala's deepwater port handles most of the country's overseas trade. It has special installations for handling timber products, bananas, gasoline, and bauxite, as well as fishing facilities. Imports include chemicals, fuel, cereals and building equipment.

There are 11 cargo berths in total, 9 of which are used for general cargo with 58,000m² of warehousing. There is also 380,000m² of open storage space and 8,000m² of cold storage available.