Are Land Tenure Problems Killing Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa?: The Case of Cameroon

Land tenure, or access and rights to land, is essential for maintaining household livelihoods. This article analyses the effect that land tenure issues can have on food security in Cameroon. This study highlights the central role of land acquisition on food security, showing how farmers' perceived and de facto land insecurity influences their decisions to engage in agriculture to ensure food security. To analyse this study, we used estimation techniques such as the probit method and, for robustness, the Logit estimation method. Our results show that securing land is far from being a trivial matter when it comes to guaranteeing food security in Cameroon. Moreover, although the main results of the study reveal close links between what can be described as land insecurity and food security, we argue that the former can automatically affect the latter. From a policy point of view, the article highlights the need to place people's livelihoods at the centre of land governance, thus going beyond the current positioning of land as a simple means of agricultural production or environmental conservation.