Analysing Mismatches in the Demand and Supply of Classrooms in the Basic and Secondary Education Sectors in Cameroon

Abstract

The present work analyzed the contribution of Cameroon’s public contracts and territorial planning policies toward the reduction of classroom disparities across the country. Many localities in Cameroon suffer due to misallocation of classrooms on one hand and inefficient public contracting-execution system on the other hand. This paper uses a hypothetico-deductive method to understand the nexus of public contracting-territorial planning within the educational sector in Cameroon. To do this we made use of existing infrastructural data collected from various Ministerial Departments and public contracts data from 2016 to 2022. Findings show that there is a great disparity of existing classrooms, injustice in the allocation of classrooms and bad governance practices in the award and execution of allocated classrooms that directly contribute to this uneven repartition. At the national scale, the Centre and Littoral regions seem to be saturated with about 20,574 and 10,436 classrooms respectively, the Far North which is part of the Priority Education Zone is in dying need of about 11,293 classrooms while on the local or regional scale these two saturated regions show some degree of insufficiency in term of available classrooms. Therefore, much needs to be done by the Cameroonian authorities in order to ensure inclusive, equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all as stipulated by the Sustainable Development Goal 4.