Cameroon

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Douala has no roads.

According to the article, the reason why the government of Cameroon hasn't built roads is because in 1982, when president Biya first came to power, there were still roads left over from colonial rule. He figure the roads would last at least until 1990, which at the time was as long as he expected he could stay in power. He felt that investing in the roads wouldn't have much of an impact on his re-election, and so he instead takes the money coming in from the World Bank and America and Britain and France and puts it in his pocket.

And now, even though the roads have fallen apart it doesn't matter. President Biya is elected with a 90 percent majority every time, like clockwork.

Be it through police blockades or uselessly frivolous public-works projects, corruption is pervasive from bottom to top. In the case of the v-shaped library, where the money could have been much more effectively spent on new books or computers or scholarships for poor students, it was instead "invested" in an ass-backwards new library, because there are more opportunities to extract bribes from that. Also, the principle of the school, who was majorly connected to those responsible for the allocation of education funds, had an interest in making her school a university, and so needed a library of university size. For this useless project, the school chose an equally useless architect. This was the result.

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