Urbanization and Development of Market Spaces in Bafoussam, West Cameroon

Abstract

Cameroon, like the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, is characterized by rapid urbanization. At the same time, the proliferation of commercial spaces continues to grow because they fulfill a crucial economic and social function. Their development leads to an explosion in the number of traders making the trading infrastructure insufficient. Wholesalers, retailers, lifeguards and other hawkers struggle to occupy spaces while local elected officials struggle to develop and organize them. The objective of this article is to describe the relationship between urbanization and the organization of commercial spaces. The hypothesis put forward poses that urbanization and underemployment lead to their saturation and overflow. To demonstrate this, a survey was conducted among 435 traders, 7 interviews were conducted with resource persons to whom observations were added. Statistical processing and data analysis made it possible to understand that the urban disorder in Bafoussam reveals the lack of infrastructure that can overwhelm traders. The operations of construction and rehabilitation of markets set up in a mode of regulation of the merchant space by the CTDs have not been able to solve the problem. This results in anti-social behavior, poor infrastructure maintenance and the poor image of retail spaces.