FINDING LAND FOR CAMEROON NOMADS

Harouna's herd of cattle grazes
leisurely on lush green
vegetation in Ndop, a small
village in Cameroon's North West
Region.
"We were born to this. Our
fathers and forefathers were
born to this. A Mbororo man
cannot survive without rearing
cattle," he tells IPS.
The cattle herder is one of almost
2.5 million indigenous Mbororo
people in this Central African
nation of about 21 million
people. Traditionally, the Mbororo
are pastoral nomads.
Almost a century ago, when the
Mbororos first came to the area
of Bamenda, in the North West
Region, there was enough
grazing land and water here for
their cattle.
But over the years as more
people ventured into farming,
the Mbororos' grazing land
began to diminish and it
invariably led to violent clashes
between the nomadic Mbororos
and the sedentary farming
population.
According to a U.S. Agency for
International Development report
on Cameroon titled "Property
Rights and Resource
Governance", disputes over
access to land are relatively
common. And conflict between
pastoralist herders and
sedentary farmers occur as
"farmers have encroached on
traditional grazing lands,
desertification has pushed
herders south and cattle
numbers have increased."
As the planting season
approaches, Harouna is a
worried man. Soon he will have
to move his cattle away from the
local farms to prevent them from
being attacked and killed by
farmers.
"In 2012, I lost 50 cattle," he
explains.
It is no secret that the local
farmers want the pastoralists to
leave the area.
"Before these nomadic herders
came to this place, we were
already here. Our forefathers
were here long before they
came," Divine Che, a local farmer,
tells IPS.
"I don't know why they really
think that we must give them
room for accommodation. Their
cattle destroy our crops all the
time. I think it makes sense for
them to look for another place
where people are not already
settled," he says, adding that it
would be "very complicated for
us to co-habit with them."