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Abstract

Bamum is a territory of the West Region of Cameroon founded in the 14th century by King Nchare. It is a kingdom where the King is the custodian of the land. It is a cosmopolite area where the Bamum people who are native of the place, livetogetherwith others people belonging toothers tribes. But, thoseallochtones living there most often acquire land from native people for exploitation. After buying a piece of land, they have only a usufruit right on the land ceded to them, but not the right to dispose of it. Thus, attempts to obtain land title are very often forbidden by native peoples on the pretext that they do not have the right to register land in aforeign territory. This conflict situation encourages corruption as condition to register the land; without which no investment is sustainable. Poor land governance and inequalities in women's and youth access to land reinforce land insecurity and poor land development in Bamun country. This work aims to show the process of landaccessand the constraints linked to the sustainable development of land in Bamum country. The study is based on literature review, participating observations, resource interviews,and social surveys. As result, land is managed in Bamum country by the King in a decentralized way. This decentralization system is made possible through traditional rulers. There are many inequalities in access to land in intercommunity and intracommunity levels. The intercommunity level concern the inequality between native and stranger peoples. They don’t have the same rights on the land. Native peoples do not want strangers to secure land in their territory and this made their investment less important. At the intracommunity level, women and youth don’t have the same right of access to land because of traditional rules and modern law. Furthermore, Rich and poor people do not also have the same capacities to own land because of corruption in land tenure services, the long period and high cost of establishment of land titles. Theses inequalities causes land insecurity and causesa serious threat to sustainable land development in Bamum country.

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