Kribi reaches six cities, three of them capitals, within 300 km; rail would make it the region’s steel hinge

6.1 Where the customers are

Steel demand in Central Africa follows construction: cities, roads, bridges, power lines and housing. Africa’s apparent steel use rose by about 10% to 45.0 Mt in 2025, and the world steel association forecasts further growth of 3.8% in 2026 and 4.6% in 2027 [S95][S96]. Use per head is still low, about 29 kg in Africa as a whole and 22.5 kg outside Egypt and South Africa, against about 209 kg worldwide [S95]. Cameroon is the largest market in the CEMAC region: in 2023 it accounted for about US$310 million of the region’s roughly US$500 million of imports of iron and steel products under chapter 72 [S94].

Source: geodesic calculation by Cameroon Steel from city-centre positions [S110]; UN Comtrade public API [S94].

The neighbours buy finished products and semi-finished steel from outside the region and, to a lesser extent, from Cameroon. Cameroon already exports about 31,000 t a year of bars, mostly to Chad [S93], and in 2026 the government’s committee on mining and metallurgy began preparing exports of Cameroonian steel to markets of the African Continental Free Trade Area, which Cameroon has ratified [S45][S108].

For a Kribi platform, the geography of demand points two ways. Inland, the large markets are Douala and Yaoundé, reached through Édéa, and the transit corridors from Douala to N’Djamena and Bangui, which carry most of the landlocked countries’ imports. Along the coast, the markets of Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Congo and São Tomé are closer to Kribi by sea than to most of their other suppliers, and can be served by coastal shipping or, for Equatorial Guinea and northern Gabon, by road through Ebolowa and the southern border crossings.

Source: Drawn by Cameroon Steel from Natural Earth admin-0 boundaries [S110]; railway projects from PAK, 25 February 2022 and 4 June 2026 [S34][S41]; deposit position approximate.

6.2 Distance: close to the coastal capitals, far from the interior

Figure 6.1 also sets out straight-line distances from Kribi to the region’s main cities. They are not road distances, which are longer, but they show the structure of the market. Six cities, including three capitals, lie within 300 km. The interior capitals, N’Djamena and Bangui, lie about 1,000 to 1,200 km away, as does Brazzaville. Lagos, the largest market in the Gulf of Guinea, is about 820 km by straight line and is served by its own ports.

The implication is that Kribi’s natural steel market is the coastal belt from Douala to Libreville plus Yaoundé, a population of several million in fast-growing cities, with the landlocked interior reached through the existing corridors on the same terms as Douala’s suppliers. A Kribi mill does not need to beat Douala’s re-rollers in N’Djamena; it needs to supply what the region imports, at a delivered cost below imports, along the corridors that already exist.

Coastal shipping is underused in the region and deserves attention. A coaster or barge service from Kribi to Bata, Malabo, Libreville, Port-Gentil and Pointe-Noire could carry bars, coils of wire rod and sections in parcels of a few thousand tonnes. The deep-water quay matters less for this trade than berth availability and simple customs procedures for intra-CEMAC goods, which travel duty-free when they meet the community’s rules of origin.

6.3 Roads: one motorway, one trunk road under reconstruction

Kribi’s road links are shown in Figure 2.1. A motorway connects Kribi town with the port at Lolabé [S111]. From Kribi, the national trunk road runs north to Édéa, on the main Douala-Yaoundé axis, and a second trunk road runs east to Ebolowa and the south of the country [S111].

The road to Édéa is the critical link. The international tender for the reconstruction of the Édéa-Kribi road, 110 km long, was signed on 24 February 2025 [S27]. The African Development Bank had urged priority for the Édéa-Kribi and Lolabé-Campo roads during a visit to the port in September 2024 [S48], and PAK listed the acceleration of road projects, starting with Édéa-Kribi, among its challenges for 2026 [S29]. No completion date has been published. Until the road is rebuilt, all heavy traffic between Kribi and Douala or Yaoundé shares an older two-lane road with passenger traffic.

Figure 6.3 shows why this matters for a steel cluster, and which part of the traffic matters. If every flow moved by road, a first phase of 0.3 Mtpa would generate about 74 truck movements a day and a full works of 1 Mtpa about 245 [S112]. More than half of these movements carry imported iron units over the short distance from the quay to a plant inside the port domain, and could move on private haul roads or covered conveyors. The public road to Édéa would carry the products sold to Douala, Yaoundé and the interior, plus a small flow of domestic scrap: about 37 loads a day for a first phase and about 110 to 120 at 1 Mtpa, falling to about 20 and 55 to 60 if half the output ships by sea. A cluster of several heavy tenants would multiply these numbers.

Source: Cameroon Steel reference configuration RC-1 (planning estimate), logistics balance; 30 t payload, 300 working days a year [S112]. Split and train equivalents are Cameroon Steel arithmetic (Annex A).

6.4 Rail: an agreement in principle and an ore railway in planning

Kribi is not yet connected to Cameroon’s railway network. Two projects would change that.

The first is the Édéa-Kribi-Lolabé-Campo railway, about 185 km long. On 4 June 2026 the Government, AGL, the aluminium company CAMALCO and other partners signed a memorandum of understanding covering feasibility, design, financing, construction and operation, under the chairmanship of the Minister of Transport [S41]. By linking the port to Édéa, the line would connect Kribi to the existing metre-gauge network that serves Douala, Yaoundé and the north, and through it to the corridor towards Chad. For a steel cluster it would carry outbound products to Douala and Yaoundé and inbound scrap collected inland, and it would take most of the cluster’s heavy traffic off the public road: at 1 Mtpa, the public-road flows of one works, about 110 to 120 truck loads a day, are equivalent to more than two trains of 1,500 t a day (Annex A).

The second is the Mbalam-Kribi ore railway. In February 2022 PAK announced the signature of a public-private partnership contract for a railway from the Mbalam iron-ore deposit in the East Region to Kribi, together with a concession for a multimodal mineral terminal [S34]. The railway corridor is reported at 659 km, 540 km of it in Cameroon [S170]; the 2011 feasibility study had costed a 510 km line [S171]. The mine’s developers have described a plan to export up to 10 Mt a year by road in 2026 to 2029 and up to 25 Mt a year by rail from 2030 [S46]. The government’s 2026 to 2030 iron-ore programme covers three projects whose ore would reach the coast at or near Kribi: Mbalam, Bipindi-Grand Zambi and Kribi-Lobé, with a combined investment of about 1,748 bn FCFA [S43]. The Lobé deposit lies close to the port; its developer has planned a short road link to the port and has deferred first exports to 2027 [S153][S154].

For the steel platform, the ore railway matters less for the tonnage of ore it would carry, most of which would be exported, than for the fact that it would make Kribi the point where Cameroonian iron reaches the sea. The Mining Code’s requirement that at least 15% of production be made available for local transformation [S24], and the cluster label "steelmaking linked to mineral exports" [S03], both assume that ore and steel meet at the coast.

Table 6.1 sourcedKribi’s corridor projects relevant to a steel platform, October 2026

Source: as listed; status as of 10 October 2026.

6.5 A more contested regional market

Logistics advantages matter more because the regional market is becoming more competitive. Africa imported about 32.9 Mt of steel in 2025, of which about 19.4 Mt came from China [S95], and billets from China and Russia were offered at about US$465 to 480 per tonne free on board on 3 October 2026 (China 465 to 470, Russia 470 to 480) [S165]. Within the region, new capacity is arriving. The Douala group Prometal has opened a rebar plant in Gabon’s Nkok special economic zone, reported at between 120,000 and 170,000 t a year [S166]; the Fokou group has launched a new steel unit at Port-Gentil [S162]; and Gabon has cut value-added tax on locally made rebar from 10 to 3% to support local producers [S161]. Further afield, new bar and wire-rod mills of about 300,000 t a year each have been ordered for Tanzania and Côte d’Ivoire [S163][S164].

Three conclusions follow for a Kribi platform. First, delivered cost will decide market share, and delivered cost is where a port-side location pays: iron units arrive without an inland leg, and coastal customers can be served by sea. Second, the products that face the least regional competition are those the region does not yet make: semi-finished steel to feed existing re-rollers, heavier sections, and iron units. Rebar is not among them: Cameroon’s rebar capacity of about 627,000 t a year already exceeds demand of about 180,000 t [S97], so a first melt shop’s tonnage has to displace imports of billets and wire rod and reach CEMAC export markets (White paper 04, Chapter 9). Whether a Kribi billet can be made below the delivered cost of an import is assessed, with its uncertainty, in White paper 04, section 8.6, and competitiveness more broadly in White paper 09, Chapter 7. Third, regional integration cuts both ways: CEMAC’s internal market and the African Continental Free Trade Area open neighbouring markets to Kribi, and open Kribi’s home market to neighbours. A platform that combines a deep-water quay, firm power and short coastal routes is better placed than most to compete on those terms.

6.6 Designing logistics for a cluster, not a tenant

The corridor projects are being prepared by different promoters on different timetables. A steel cluster needs them to fit together at four points.

Inside the port domain. The quay, the mineral terminal and the steel plants should be linked by private haul roads or covered conveyors that keep bulk traffic off public roads. Reserving these corridors now, before plots are allocated around them, costs little; retrofitting them later is expensive.

At the rail interface. The Édéa-Kribi-Lolabé-Campo railway should be designed with sidings that can serve heavy tenants in the zone, and with a gauge and axle load that allow interchange with the ore railway, or at least transhipment at a shared yard.

At the road interface. The Édéa-Kribi road reconstruction should be specified for heavy axle loads and include a truck staging area near the zone, so that steel traffic does not queue on the public road.

At the border. Exports to Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the interior depend on simple and predictable treatment of intra-CEMAC goods. The steel cluster should work with the customs administration on procedures for products that meet the community’s rules of origin.