A time for realignment? Retrofit in the golden era of the Cameroonian railways

This chapter explores the irruption of the notion of corridor in the vocabulary of those with a stake in transport infrastructure investments in the African continent . I document this process in a particular context, that of the relationship that the World Bank and the Cameroon government forged around railways in the 1970s and, more specifically, around a project to realign the Douala-Yaoundé railway line, whose construction dated back to colonial era. My contention is that the question of intermodal transport coordination was at the heart of the then emergent policy construct of corridor but that it lost prominence in later decades, when the challenges of landlockedness and regional integration loomed larger in so-called corridor agendas.