**4. Assessing the benefits and impact of land deals: the need and the challenge**

Large scale land deals are usually associated with positive development justifying the positive response and acceptance from local populations. Multinational Corporations (MNCs) and local investors involved in the process make promises to local community members in the form of providing social amenities and infra-structure (health centers, schools, roads and bridges, water and electricity and employment) as benefits that will accrue to local communities in exchange for their land [17]. The multi-national companies involved and the state define access to these social services and amenities as positive development that justifies the displacement of community members from cultivable land and livelihood sources. This suggests that while most

MNCs and local investors value and emphasize on meeting their goals and objectives and their own development, they fail to recognize the capability and livelihood security of the people [17, 22]. There is evidence that the poor and rural population in general and women in particular are deprived of their assets, capabilities and activities that provided them with a source of living. There have been diverse implications of land deals on community members registered in different localities ranging from land access, income generating and livelihood options. The nexus between land tenure rights, land grabbing and food insecurity is very prominent and critical in achieving food security in Cameroon. While insecure tenure has attracted the rampant acquisition of large-scale land by foreign and local investors, this has also contributed to the scarcity of farmlands and the shortage of land for indigenous people destroying the natural ecosystem that the local people depended on for their livelihood and also affecting the availability of food crops.
