The risk at Kribi is sequence: each step must arrive before the industry that depends on it

9.1 Sequence is the strategy

Heavy industry has hard dependencies. A melt shop cannot be commissioned without a firm high-voltage supply and a power-quality solution. A direct-reduction module cannot run without a long-term gas contract and a dry-bulk berth for pellets. A cluster of several heavy tenants cannot grow on a first power stage of about 100 MW. Rail is valuable but not a precondition for a first phase; firm power is. Figure 9.1 sets the announced timing of Kribi’s main infrastructure projects against illustrative phases for a steel tenant.

Source: Business in Cameroon, 27 February 2025 [S71]; PAK, 6 August 2025 and 19 August 2026 [S25][S26]; Business in Cameroon, 12 May 2025 and 18 May 2026 [S57][S52]; Investir au Cameroun, 8 October 2026 [S30]; EcoMatin, 11 May 2026 [S18]; Business in Cameroon, 9 October 2026 [S61]; PAK, 13 March 2025 [S27]; PAK, 4 November 2025 [S32]; Investir au Cameroun, 4 March 2026 [S03]; PAK, 4 June 2026 [S41]. Steel-tenant phases follow the schedule of the Cameroon Steel reference configuration RC-1 (planning estimate) [S112] and are illustrative.

The figure shows a favourable window. The two utilities that a first steel phase needs, the 225 kV supply and the port-platform water plant, are under construction and due in late 2026 and early 2027 [S25][S26]. The utilities and corridors that a cluster needs, the second power stage, the mineral terminal and rail, are announced but not yet funded or scheduled in detail. A first steel phase whose works start in 2029, with a first heat in the second half of 2030 and ramp-up in 2031 as in Cameroon Steel’s reference configuration [S112], can therefore rely on infrastructure that is already being built, while the larger investments are prepared in parallel.

9.2 Infrastructure timing: plan for slippage

Large public infrastructure in Cameroon has a mixed record on timing, as it does in most countries. The evacuation line from the Nachtigal hydro plant has left about 150 MW of industrial demand unmet while it waits for completion, now expected in November 2026 [S61]. The first exports of iron ore from Mbalam were moved from the end of 2025 to early 2026 [S46], and the developer of the Lobé deposit near Kribi has deferred its first exports to 2027 [S154]. The Kribi gas plant was offline for five months from September 2024 over unpaid invoices [S71]. The mineral-terminal partners gave themselves four to six months from November 2025 to complete structuring [S32]; by October 2026 no financial close had been reported in the sources reviewed for this paper, and PAK’s Director General expected completion within five to six years of March 2026 [S03]. The Édéa-Kribi road has no published completion date [S27].

None of this is unusual for projects of this scale, but it has a clear implication for a steel platform: each phase of industrial investment should be designed to work on the infrastructure that exists, or is under construction, when the phase is committed, with the next public step treated as an upside rather than a precondition. In practice:

• a first melt shop and rolling mill should be sized to the first 100 MW stage and to the existing multipurpose and container terminals, with a power-quality solution of its own;
• a second phase should be committed only when the second power stage has a financing agreement and a construction contract;
• a direct-reduction module should be committed only when a long-term gas contract backed by audited reserves, a bulk berth for pellets and a supply of direct-reduction-grade feed are all in place.

9.3 Environmental carrying capacity

The Kribi coast is not an empty industrial site. It combines a deep-water port and a growing town with a marine national park, nesting beaches, a cultural landscape on UNESCO’s Tentative List and one of the largest forest national parks in Central Africa. Figure 9.2 shows the distances from the port to the main protected and sensitive areas.

Source: Cameroon Steel calculation from OpenStreetMap geometry [S111]; Décret n° 2021/4804/PM (marine national park) [S84]; Décret n° 2000/004/PM (Campo-Ma’an) [S85]; UNESCO Tentative List, ref. 6330 [S86].

Four pressures need to be assessed at the level of the zone, not plant by plant:

The coast. Studies of the Kribi shoreline find that it moved from slight accretion before 2000 to average retreat of about 0.9 m a year in 2000 to 2015 and about 2 m a year in 2015 to 2020, with local retreat of 45 to 70 m a year near Lolabé in 2013 to 2017, a change the authors link to sediment trapping by port structures [S80]. A 2025 study rated about 68% of the 31.5 km Kribi coast as highly vulnerable [S81]. Global sea level is projected to rise by 0.44 to 0.76 m by 2100 under an intermediate emissions scenario [S82]. Plant platforms on the coastal plateau are not exposed, but jetties, conveyors, intakes and outfalls are, and must be designed for a moving shoreline.

Air. Modelled background concentrations of fine particles (PM2.5) around the port were about 10 µg/m³ in 2024 to 2025, already above the World Health Organization’s 2021 annual guideline of 5 µg/m³, largely because of seasonal Saharan dust and biomass smoke [S92][S113]. If confirmed by monitoring, this would make the airshed "degraded" in lender terms and tighten the emissions allowed to each new source. A zone-wide air-quality monitoring network, started before the first furnace, would establish the baseline and allocate the remaining headroom fairly.

Biodiversity and the sea. The northern limit of the Manyange na Elombo-Campo Marine National Park, created in 2021, lies about 11 km south of the port [S84]. Its beaches are used by nesting marine turtles, and communities and conservationists have raised concerns about cumulative pressure from port and industrial development on the park and its fishing villages [S91]. Effluent, lighting, dredging and ship traffic from the industrial zone all reach this coast.

Carbon. An arc-furnace works on Cameroon’s hydro-dominated grid has a low carbon intensity by world standards. Cameroon Steel’s reference configuration puts its Scope 1 emissions and its Scope 2 emissions from purchased electricity at an estimated 0.32 t of CO₂ per tonne of product in Phase 1 (about 0.33 t at full build-out) [S112], on a narrower boundary that excludes the upstream emissions of imported iron units, against world averages of 1.47 t per tonne of crude steel for the DRI-EAF route and 2.34 t for the blast-furnace route [S77]. That advantage has commercial value: steel exported to the European Union now carries a carbon-border charge, with a certificate price of €82.32 per tonne of CO₂ in the third quarter of 2026 [S103]; the mechanism and its effect on Cameroonian steel are analysed in White paper 06, Chapter 5. But a cluster at full scale would still emit hundreds of thousands of tonnes a year, and any project above 100,000 t of CO₂ equivalent a year must, under the Equator Principles, carry out a climate risk assessment and report its emissions publicly [S89].

The legal framework already points to a zone-level approach. A 2016 order of the environment ministry requires a strategic environmental assessment for industrial zones and industrial-port complexes, and a detailed environmental and social impact assessment for metal production [S87]. The 2013 decree on impact assessment sets out the procedure, including public consultations and hearings, and provides that the certificate of environmental compliance lapses if a project has not started within three years [S88]. International lenders will apply the IFC Performance Standards in full, including those on community health, land acquisition, indigenous peoples and biodiversity [S90]. A strategic environmental assessment of the whole zone, with a cumulative-impact plan that allocates air, water and coastal capacity among future tenants, is the single most useful step the zone could take to accelerate every heavy-industry permit within it.

9.4 Land governance in transition

The second structural constraint is institutional. Responsibility for the zone is moving from PAK to KPIZ, and with it the contractual framework under which tenants occupy land. Under the arrangements announced in May 2026, PAK remains the administrative and contractual counterpart of existing occupants while KPIZ takes over operations, and occupancy titles are being reviewed before a new framework under KPIZ is introduced [S10][S11]. PAK and KPIZ have committed to transparency and legal certainty during the transition [S12].

For a new heavy-industry tenant, the questions are practical: which entity signs, on what template, for what term, at what price, and with what protection if the authority needs the land back. The most recent published agreement in the port domain gave a twenty-year renewable authorisation over 9.2 ha for an agro-industrial terminal [S19]. Steel plants are financed over fifteen to twenty years and operate for forty or more; lenders will look for terms that outlast the debt by a comfortable margin, renewal rights and compensation on early termination.

Land governance also has a history. The port land was declared of public utility in 2009 and compensation for those affected was set by decree in 2010 [S157]. Lenders applying the IFC Performance Standards will ask how that process treated the people who used the land, including any indigenous Bagyeli communities of the Océan department, and whether any residual claims remain [S90]. A zone-level review of land history, completed once by KPIZ and shared with tenants, would answer those questions faster and more consistently than separate reviews by each investor.

9.5 Services and social infrastructure

The third constraint is the absence of services that a heavy-industry cluster takes for granted elsewhere: a hazardous-waste facility (Chapter 5), an industrial-gas supplier (Chapter 7), a zone fire and emergency service equipped for molten metal and industrial gases, accredited testing laboratories and a training centre. The fourth is social infrastructure for a growing workforce: housing, schools and health care. The South Region has the highest HIV prevalence among adults in Cameroon, 5.8% in the latest demographic and health survey, and high malaria prevalence among young children [S158]. A construction workforce of hundreds per project, and permanent workforces of thousands across the zone, need worker accommodation, health services and community programmes planned at zone scale.

Table 9.1 derivedConstraint register for a Kribi steel platform

Source: Cameroon Steel assessment from the sources listed. Ratings combine likelihood and impact for a steel cluster.

9.6 Preconditions for each step

The register translates into a short list of preconditions. Table 9.2 sets them out as a checklist that a zone authority, a lender or an investor can use to decide whether the next step is ready.

Table 9.2 derivedPreconditions for each step of a Kribi steel platform

Source: Cameroon Steel analysis.