**7. Conclusion**

In Cameroon, extensive evidence confirms the centrality of women in the agricultural sector in general and in subsistence food crop production in particular. They make up a majority of the active labour force in the food crop sector and as food crop producers and processors, women play a crucial role in ensuring family survival and safeguarding national food security. Although women play a crucial role in ensuring household food survival and food security, they lack access to and control over land, have limited ownership and inheritance rights to land with only use rights to land. This gender-based constraint serves as a critical limitation restricting women's access and control over resources, lesser livelihood options and their active participation in generating income for household sustenance. The expansion of large-scale

land acquisition in the country only intensifies the scarcity of land, which is a major productive resource for women. As have others, this study argues that women bear the brunt of land deals particularly given limitations and challenges in relation to their control and ownership of land. While land acquisition by local investors displaces women from cultivable land, the land deals also deprive women of subsistence food crop production, a major source of livelihood for rural women. One is likely to conclude that the large-scale land deals by local investors including the promises of employment, social amenities and infrastructural development failed to trickledown to infrastructural and social development and more incomes for the local population with no positive effects on food security.
