Professor Nicodemus Fru Awasom is a holder of a Doctorat and a PhD degree in History from the University of Yaoundé and Ibadan respectively and is therefore a scholar of French and English-speaking academic traditions. He is an academic of international standing with decades of teaching experience in several universities in Africa and Europe, and with a track record of publications in peer review journals in Africa, Europe, Canada, and the USA. His last teaching assignment was at the University of Swaziland (now Eswatini) where he taught African history for 10 years with particular emphasis on methodology and the decolonisation of African history. He edited a book on Youth and Identity in Africa (forthcoming CODESRIA: Dakar) and another book on the Making and Unmaking of Africa’s Independence Constitution, currently under review by Spinger’s publishers.

His Doctoral thesis was on the Hausa and Fulani in the Bamenda Grasslands 1903-1960 and this constituted a fertile ground for him to embark on research on the Mbororo in the light of declassified British Public Records on the Mbororo. The title of his book project here at MIASA is: The Unending Crises of Mbororo Pastoralism in Cameroon.

Since he left the University of Swaziland, he has been a temporary visiting scholar at the Department of History, University of Ghana, Legon-Accra, University of Bamenda and the University of Buea in Cameroon and is engaged in supervising a couple of PhD theses.

Professor Awasom is also a political activist and a virulent critique of the President Biya’s 42 years old regime in Cameroon, and French neo-colonialism (FranceAfrique).. He is also leading expert in the Anglophone problem in Cameroon and had made concrete proposals for the resolution of the crisis.

MIASA Fellowship Project: The Unending Crises of Mbororo Pastoralism in Cameroon

Since the advent of the Mbororo pastoralists in Cameroon’s northwest region in 1903, their relationship with autochthonous agriculturalists has been persistently oscillating between short periods of peaceful co-existence and protracted periods of bellicose co-existence. Extent scholarship on herders-farmers’ relations is not comprehensive enough, is not aptly historicized and ignores parallel situations in Sahel and Savannah Africa. This book project sets out to fill this gap. It adopts primary documented evidence, fieldwork, and library resources as its methodology. The work reveals that a configuration of factors including demographic explosion, competition over land use and water resources, governmental policies, climate change, communication breakdown, weak punitive measures against previous offenders, and media postings, contributed to igniting the incessant farmers-grazer conflicts at the expense of peaceful co-existence. This project recommends new land use policies, modernized grazing practices, vigorous socioeconomic and psychological education of the belligerents, provisions of basic infrastructures favourable for farmer-grazer co-existence and the disciplining of offenders.

Selected publications

Awasom, N.F., Towards Understanding Fumbuen women demonstration against Mbororo Farm encroachments and the fall of against Fon Simon Vugah II of Babanki in North West Cameroon, Occasional Papers, No 39, University of Bamenda, 2023

Awasom, N.F., The anglophone problem in Cameroon yesterday and today in search of a definition. Journal of the African Literature Association, 2020, pp.1-28.

 Dlamini, H. P., & Awasom, N. F. (2018). THE EMERGENCE AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMMUNITY POLICE IN SWAZILAND. UNESWA 50-50 Commemoration Journal.

“Globalisation, Recrudescence of Criminality and Community Policing in Swaziland since the Early 1990s”, University of Swaziland Research Journal (UREJ), 37(5), 2018,  pp. 18: 21-39.

Awasom, N.F., (Editor), The Youth and Identity Question in Africa (Dakar: CODESRIA 2019)

Awasom, N.F., The Hausa-Fulani in the Bamenda Grasslands in North Western Cameroon and the Question of Islam 1916-1972 (Bamenda: Nooremac Printing Press, 2017)

Awasom, N.F., Autochthonization Politics and the Invention of the Crisis of Citizenship in Cameroon in The Leadership Challenge in Africa: Cameroon Under Paul Biya. Edited by John Mukum Mbaku and Joseph Takougang (Africa World Press, 2004).

Awasom, N.F., From Migrants to Nationals, and from Nationals to Undesirable Elements: The Case of the Fulani (Mbororo) Muslim Graziers in Cameroon’s North West Province, pp. 403-414 In: Etre Etranger et Migrant en Afrique au Xxe Siècle. Enjeux identitaire et modes d’insertion, Vol.1. Edited by Catherine Coquet Vidrovitch, Odile Goerg, Issiaka Mande and Faranirina Rajaonah (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003).

Awasom, N.F., The Fulani and the Political Economy of the Bamenda Grasslands 1940-1960, Paideuma, 36, 1990.