Turkish firm to build Cameroon’s biggest sports complex

YAOUNDE - Anadolu Agency

A Turkish company is set to build Cameroon’s largest sports complex, which will host the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations, according to a local media report on Nov. 3.

The Japoma sports complex will include a 50,000-seat stadium, a sports hall, an Olympic swimming pool, two training courts and tennis courts, the daily Cameroon Tribune reported, adding that 75 percent of the project would be financed by Turk Eximbank.    
  
The complex has to be “delivered four months before the start of the African Cup of Nations ... which will take place in Cameroon in 2019,” Cameroon’s economy minister, Louis-Paul Motaze, said at the signing of the project financing agreement in Yaounde on Nov. 2.  
   
Turkish Ambassador to Cameroon Murat Ülkü said this would be the first time a Turkish company has carried out “a project of this scale.”      

“But we are not worried, as it has expertise,” Ülkü added.  
    
The complex will be built by Yenigun Construction, which said on its website that the contract for the project regarding the construction of Douala-Japoma Stadium was signed in December 2015 “as our first project in Cameroon.”

The project will cost around $240 million, according to Cameroon Tribune.