Mayors of Douala and Niamey visit CODATU

Two African delegations were visiting CODATU last week.

Mr. OUMAROU DOGARI MOUMOUNI, Deputy Mayor, President of the City Council of Niamey, wanted to meet CODATU during his visit to Lyon on October 12.

CODATU has indeed supported the City Council of Niamey in 2019 to develop an operational roadmap for improving urban mobility, validated during the January 2020 Forum, carried out with the financial support of AFD and the MobiliseYourCity program.

This roadmap provides for 4 main themes:

• Improving the governance of urban mobility at the Greater Niamey level, with the establishment of a dedicated entity that could be progressively strengthened, and decision support tools
• Effectively controlling urban sprawl and promote a more compact and multi-polar city
• Improving paratransit through a coherent set of measures, beneficial to both users and operators: urban development, professionalization (training, insurance for drivers, etc.), support measures (purchase and operation of vehicles, economic interest groups), improvement of operating conditions, securing administrative procedures, etc.
• Defining a strategy for institutional bus transport, conceived as complementary to paratransit

Following the change of executive at City Hall and the COVID crisis, the Deputy Mayor confirmed that this roadmap was still relevant. Exchanges will continue with CODATU for the operation implementation. the City of Niamey will participate in the International Club of Mobility Organizing Authorities (Club des AOM) led by CODATU and is looking for decentralized cooperation that can help in at least one of the themes of the roadmap.

The Deputy Mayor was accompanied by Mr. IBRAHIM F. SMITH, General Inspector of Services, Mr. FOUSSEINI OUSMANA, Senior Technical Advisor, in charge of General Affairs, Mr. MAMANE OUSMANE, Director of Studies, Programming and Forecasting, Mr. AMANE OUMAROU, Director of Communication and Press and Mr. DOUDOU MAMOUDOU, Director of Public Lighting.

On October 13, CODATU also received the Mayor of Douala, Dr. ROGER MBASSA NDINE, and the Head of Cooperation of the Urban Community of Douala (CUD), Mrs. ELSE KINGUE-LENGUE. during this visit, the following issues were discussed: the participation of the city in the CODATU Club des AOM, the important projects that will transform the city of Douala following the SUMP validated two years ago (including the BRT financed by the World Bank) as well as the bus donation charter elaborated by the GART and CODATU.

These exchanges, which finally took place physically after months of virtual meetings, were particularly stimulating and enriching.