From electricity fraud to heterodox electricity management in the “mini-cities” of Obili in Yaoundé (Cameroon)

Abstract

With the cacophony that has become widespread in university residence areas in Cameroon, the once well-regulated electrical energy has found itself out of reach of the competent authorities. There is a vagueness around access and especially the management of this asset. Thus, the study questions the actors, logics, and strategies for managing electricity consumption in a context of widespread electrical fraud. To do this, the work mobilizes a documentary review, observations, interviews and a georeferenced questionnaire survey in KoboCollect. Data processing mobilized statistical analyses in SPSS and Excel, content analyses and cartographic analyses in ArcGIS. It is noted that the anarchy that prevailed in the rise of mini-cities has favoured electrical fraud, which induces atypical and irrational management of electricity consumption. For mainly pecuniary reasons, several actors take part in these practices: the corrupt agents of the national electricity company and some surrounding electricians. In these unconventional practices, the equipment for measuring consumption and securing installations is quite rare and practically non-existent. This gives free rein to irrational and judgemental managerial policies, including the estimation of consumption (27% of occurrences), or the very widespread practice of the flat rate (43% of occurrences). Practices that mow down the recovery of energy supplied by the national operator and consequently increase losses on the public electricity distribution network, a source of underperformance of the national electricity concessionaire.