Abstract
Preventive management of risk zones: railway rights-of-way in Cameroon. — In Cameroon, when a railway passes through a town, it is built on a right-of-way whose width was set at 70 metres by Ordinance no. 74-1 of 6 July 1974 establishing the rules governing land tenure. In the mind of the legislator, this area should remain vacant to allow sufficient space for rail transport through urban areas. Unfortunately, failure to abide by this land tenure legislation has turned the right-of-way into an area where activities as diverse as agriculture, commerce, industry and housing compete for space. The coexistence of divergent land uses in a particularly sensitive area has increased the vulnerability of the urban railway right-of-way, now classified as an urban risk zone. The railway disaster in Nsam, a district in Yaounde (the capital of Cameroon), on 14 February 1998, highlighted the precariousness of the situation. Inspired by that tragic event, this paper encourages further reflection on railway safety in urban areas and moves on to a general study of mechanisms of prevention and georisk management in the planning of African cities. Through a systemic analysis, it synergistically integrates demographic, economic, legal, financial and spatial parameters.
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