Cameroon is part of a global trend towards large-scale investments in infrastructure, agriculture, extractive industries, industrial facilities and real estate that are displacing many people. Deeming these projects in the public interest, governments often acquire land by expropriating locally-held land rights. But compulsory land acquisition has severe economic, social and cultural impacts for families and communities.

The study illustrates that small holders, particularly women, are increasingly losing farmland. It questions the social development impact of large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) in Cameroon in terms of better living standards and reduction of poverty. It also examines how and under what conditions women can be empowered to effectively engage with LSLAs to ensure that legal and policy frameworks foster better accountability and legitimacy in land governance. Most untitled land in Cameroon is now national land held under customary tenancy, without security.

Rangelands cover a surface area of more than 2 million hectares in Cameroon. Despite their relatively unpredictable climate and unproductive nature they provide a wide variety of goods and services including forage for livestock, habitat for wildlife, water and minerals, woody products, recreational services, nature conservation as well as acting as carbon sinks. Rangelands in Cameroon are predominantly grassland savanna with three types distinguishable: the Guinean savanna, Sudan savanna (also known as ‘derived montane grasslands’), and the Sahel savanna.

Date: décembre 2017

Source: Foncier & Développement

Par: Samuel Nguiffo, Victor Amougou Amougou, Brendan Schwartz, Lorenzo Cotula

In Cameroon, commercial and infrastructural developments are exerting increasing pressure on land and natural resources, which is in turn exacerbating the risks to the rights of indigenous peoples. Against this backdrop, the ongoing process of revising Cameroon’s land legislation provides an opportunity to secure aspects of indigenous peoples’ rights, as part of a wider effort to secure the land rights of local communities.

This brief study has been produced by the partners of the CoNGOs consortium to share our different knowledge and experience, and to set out a joint understanding of the current state of play in relation to community forestry in Cameroon.

A recent surge in agribusiness plantation deals has increased pressures on land in many low- and middle-income countries. Rural people have mobilised to protect their rights, seek better terms or oppose the deals altogether. Since 2014, an initiative in Cameroon, Ghana and Senegal has worked to help people harness the law in order to have greater control over decisions that affect them – a process commonly referred to as legal empowerment.