This requires a change of attitude, of moving from the line of confrontation, to some form of 'co-habitation'. This approach has already been tried in several places. It is not a new approach either. Any reference to land tenure now has to take long-term management of natural resources, such as water and forests, into account. The complexity of the land tenure puzzle is already well-known, thanks to field research.
Traditional authorities can also grant land use rights to 'strangers'.
Nor can the migrants be sure that they will be able to pass on the land they bought to their descendants. There are many such complicated cases, but where there is a will to find solutions, there is a way. In just one village north of Lake Chad, for example, villagers made no fewer than 109 agreements on seasonal grazing with nomadic pastoralists in the region, covering routes, grazing grounds, and access to water. These agreements led to tensions between the two communities subsiding. Paul Mathieu3, a university specialist, tells of cases in Burkina Faso, where villagers in the department of Sapouy, south of Ouagadougou, have made arrangements which transcend the separate identities of lineages, neighbourhood or villages.