The place of the bicycle in urban planning in Sub-Saharan Africa. Violence and marginalization of a tool for sustainable urbanisation in Cameroon
Funding period: 1 November 2022 – 31 July 2023
Type of funding:
International Fellowship
Dr. Salifou Ndam obtained his PhD in urban sociology from the University of Yaoundé 1 in July 2020. Between 2021 and 2022 he was a Postdoctoral scholarship holder of Swiss Government Excellence Scholarships for Foreign Scholars at the Institute of Geography and Sustainability of the University of Lausanne.
His research aims to show that the study of the social representations of cycling in public spaces is a key to understanding the very low cycling practice of some cities such as Yaoundé and Douala in terms of sustainable mobility when sustainable urbanisation is a matter of emergency. Metropolises located in Central Africa and comprising approximately 46.8% of the urban population of Cameroon, they confine bicycles and consider them as a dangerous means of transport for its users and other road users. Then, cycling in the streets appears as a marginal means of transport and a source of social downgrading for its holder or not. Based on a qualitative and quantitative methodological approach, this research seeks to show how the cities of Yaoundé and Douala can boost the dynamics of sustainable mobility by becoming (again) favourable to this activity. His research is an undeniable added value to work on the utilitarian practice of cycling, as it discusses innovative aspects of daily mobility in Africa in general and in Cameroon in particular, where, in most cases, the bicycle is simply considered as an object of entertainment for the private area.
As a USF International Fellow, Dr. Ndam will spend nine months with Prof. Patrick Rérat at the Institute of Geography and Sustainability, the University Observatory of Cycling and Active Mobility (OUVEMA), University of Lausanne.