Paper short abstract:

Access to the local population land in Mandjou Village and to the infrastructures such as drinking water wells managed under the control of the refugees creates conflicts of interest whose ethnic relationship and status plays a predominant role.

Paper long abstract:

Due to the deteriorating security climate, many Mbororo nomadic population have been forced to flee the Central African Republic in recent years. The loss of their vital heritage (cattle herds) is one of the direct consequences of kidnappings, attacks and looting of armed groups. Given this dynamic of insecurity and the plundering of their livestock, many of these nomads find refuge in refugee camps in Cameroon, where their survival no longer depends on their own resources but rather on international organizations. These encampments in question were, at the beginning, of the constructions of circumstance which have become, over time, periurban villages. The data of this study were collected in one of those villages called Mandjou in the periphery of Bertoua; a town in the Eastern region of Cameroon. In that village, the refugees must request permission to exploit the land of the local population in the one hand. On the other hand, they also control the infrastructure that the NGOs have put in place and therefore exploitation is essential for all the inhabitants of the locality . It is in these rapport of constant negotiations that this paper intends to examine the reality of ethnic interaction, territorial control and the management of resources which at the same time constitute factors of rapprochement and discord between refugees and local populations.