Full involvement of local people is very necessary to ensure proper management of land for the benefit of local people, this is according to Tanja Pickardt. She was speaking during the GIZ session at Tropentag 2011 on the topic “participation of the local population in the context of large-scale land acquisitions and leases” . She indicated that large scale land accusition is a big issue in most parts of the world especially in developing countries adding that the figures of land sales went up from 50 million hectares (published by the World Bank in 2010) to 80 million hectares (published by IFP in 2011). On a broader picture, she noted that 227 million hectares of land has been sold or leased since 2001 based on media releases and case study research. According to Tanja, the focus of large scale land investment is in Sub-sahara Africa mostly for biofuel, food crop cultivation, industrial crops and livetock, as well as game farm and forestry. Opportunities for large scale land investment According to the speaker, it is generally agreed that investments in agriculture and rural development are urgently needed in developing countries but governments often do not allocate the needed resources to this sector. This means that private sector involvement is necessary but under what circumstances can private sector involvement help to realize oppportunities and to contribute to improve the living conditions of the local people? She mentioned some of the possible opportunities of land investment as;