Cameroon has a new national water compact for 2026 to 2030 and has committed to revising its water law. That makes it a promising place in Central Africa to write women’s rights into water policy. RFLD’s policy brief, Women, Water and Article 15 of the Maputo Protocol, includes Cameroon among its six case studies. This article sets out the findings.
Cameroon and the Maputo Protocol
Cameroon signed the Maputo Protocol on 25 July 2006. It ratified on 13 September 2012 and deposited its instrument on 28 December 2012. It lodged a general interpretive declaration about ethical and moral values, which the African Commission lists among reservations. None of the reservations listed by the Commission concerns Article 15.
The African Commission’s 2026 Advocacy Framework for Withdrawing Reservations asks States to lodge interpretive declarations rather than reservations. It also asks the Commission to prepare general comments on whether reservations are valid. For more, see RFLD’s country briefs on lifting the reservations.
Access: improved, but rarely safe
The UN Statistical Yearbook table used elsewhere in the brief gives no values for Cameroon. The brief relies instead on Cameroon’s National Water Compact for 2026 to 2030, published in the World Bank’s Water Forward series.
The Compact reports that 77% of people had access to an improved water source in 2025. In 2022, the figure was 92% in urban areas and 60% in rural areas. But only 9% had safely managed water in 2021. An improved source, such as a borehole, is a step forward. It does not mean that water is safely managed for the people who use it.
For sanitation in 2021, the Compact reports 62.3% with improved facilities and 25.6% with safely managed sanitation. Its targets for 2030 are 90% water access and 30% safely managed sanitation.
The legal framework
Cameroon’s water regime is set by Law No. 98/005 of 14 April 1998. Its Article 2(1) states that water is part of the common heritage of the nation, which the State protects and manages, and to which it facilitates access for all (“L’eau est un bien du patrimoine commun de la Nation dont l’Etat assure la protection et la gestion et en facilite l’accès à tous”).
The law contains no provision on gender. It does not address the time women spend collecting water or their role in managing it. The Compact commits to revising the law and its implementing decrees. RFLD’s brief names this revision, with Senegal’s, as the place to start adding a gender chapter to national water law.
Commitments on women in the Compact
The Compact does make commitments on gender. It promises “women’s involvement at all levels” of the water sector. It also commits to sex-disaggregated data and to capacity building for women in decision-making bodies.
These are welcome. The test will be whether they are funded and measured. The Compact’s total cost is 2,575 billion FCFA, about USD 4.54 billion. Of this, 1,110.67 billion FCFA, about 43%, is described as already mobilisable.
Work on the ground
UNICEF Cameroon reports on work carried out between 2022 and 2025:
- sanitation facilities in 109 public schools, serving over 82,000 pupils;
- water and sanitation infrastructure in 48 health facilities;
- guidance on menstrual hygiene for 3,457 women and adolescent girls;
- national targets to raise safe drinking water from 66% to 71% and basic sanitation from 45% to 55%.
Cameroon is also one of five pilot countries for WACDEP-G, the gender window of the Continental Africa Water Investment Programme. The programme aims to influence USD 1 billion in “gender equal and climate resilient investments”.
What RFLD recommends for Cameroon
The revision of the 1998 water law is the key opportunity. The brief asks for a gender chapter with a duty to reduce women’s time burden and to guarantee safe access at any time of day. It asks for binding quotas of at least 40% women in water user associations, municipal water committees, basin authorities and national regulators.
The brief also asks States to introduce a WASH gender budget marker and report on it under Article 26(2) of the Maputo Protocol. For Cameroon, that would show how much of the Compact’s budget reaches women. Reporting on Article 15 in the next periodic report to the African Commission would complete the picture.
About the report
This article draws on RFLD’s report Women, Water and Article 15 of the Maputo Protocol, published on 4 October 2026. Read the summary, download the English edition or the French edition.
