To browse Academia. Solid Waste Management and Environmental Protection, Log in with Facebook Log in with Google. Remember me on this computer. Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. Need an account? Click here to sign up. The capital of the North province of Cameroon, with a population of , in , Garoua was founded by nineteenth-century Fulani and Muslim conquerors and modeled on West African Hausa cities.
The city later served as the colonial capital of Adamaoua province under the Germans and French. Its role as a political, commercial, and administrative hub in northern Cameroon and the entire Lake Chad basin was strengthened in the s and s by modern urban infrastructure projects, including a commercial port on the Benoue River and an international airport, as well as a paved ring road, a vast network of municipal lighting, and public services such as water fountains and municipal garbage collection, with dumpsters placed throughout the city.
City services based on French city management practices transformed the birthplace of President Ahidjo into showcase for urban Cameroonian modernity. Once garbage collection became increasingly sporadic, improvised garbage dumps began to appear in every neighborhood, from poorer, more peripheral areas to the historic, administrative, and commercial downtown districts. The crisis appears to have worsened after a multi-party system was established in and following the post decentralization campaign [Guitard, a].
Keywords: Waste management. Public space. The arrival of people from diverse social and religious backgrounds radically altered the ethnic composition of a city that had previously been defined by its Fulani, Muslim heritage. These groups are stigmatized as being intrinsically dirty and living in unsanitary conditions due to their unhealthy behaviors. They are also blamed for being incapable of collectively maintaining the streets of their neighborhoods. This article reports the results of a study that compares neighborhood conflicts involving waste management practices in public spaces in two Garoua neighborhoods, Rumde Ajia and Kollere, an older, Muslim-Fulani district in the historic downtown.
The results suggest that accusations against particular groups need to be treated with caution. Indeed, the residents of both neighborhoods, although in different ways, tend to use their disposal of household waste as a weapon that provokes disputes between neighbors against the backdrop of the street. In both neighborhoods, friction over control of public spaces appears to be an important factor in causing neighborhood conflict. Residents began to pile their household waste in the immediate proximity of their homes or on the city outskirts, and in poorer districts that had never benefited from municipal garbage collection.
