Evaluating Climate-Smart Agriculture as Route to Building Climate Resilience in African Food Systems

Efforts to meet the growing demand for food across Africa have led to unsustainable land management practices that weaken the resilience of African Food Systems. Soil health is key to building more climate-resilient agricultural systems and can be improved through Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices that also enhance soil carbon storage. Many CSA practices are being implemented by African farmers, whereas others are being actively promoted but adoption remains low due to multiple factors including weak policy integration, limited institutional support, and inadequate agricultural extension advice. This Short Communications paper presents overview findings from trans-disciplinary research projects from Southern, East, and West Africa to evaluate the potential importance of integrated participatory soil health studies designed to inform context-specific recommendations and policies for resilient African food systems. The use of soil health indicators to measure the effectiveness of implemented CSA practices including Conservation Agriculture in maize-based systems and Soil and Water Conservation in Highland African systems are discussed. The paper identifies how more integrated research can help to enable shared learning and the enhanced knowledge exchange required for the upscaling of sustainable land management practices enabled through enhanced farmer participation in the chain of CSA activities from intervention design to community evaluation of impacts.

• Publication year

  2021

• Venue

  Sustainability

• Publication date

  2021-08-22

• Fields of study

  Agricultural and Food Sciences, Business, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3390/su13179909
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Farmer Preparedness for Building Resilient Agri-Food Systems: Lessons From the 2015/2016 El Niño Drought in Malawi

  2021cited by this paper
• Strengthening Conservation Agriculture innovation systems in sub-Saharan Africa: lessons from a stakeholder analysis

  2021cited by this paper
• Farmers’ indicators of soil health in the African highlands

  2021cited by this paper
• Combining local knowledge and soil science for integrated soil health assessments in conservation agriculture systems.

  2021cited by this paper
• Impacts of conservation agriculture on soil structure and hydraulic properties of Malawian agricultural systems

  2020cited by this paper
• Global soil science research collaboration in the 21st century: Time to end helicopter research

  2020cited by this paper
• Predictors of access to and willingness to pay for climate information services in north-eastern Ghana: A gendered perspective

  2020cited by this paper
• Transdisciplinarity as a discipline and a way of being: complementarities and creative tensions

  2020cited by this paper
• Lake Malawi’s threshold behaviour: A stakeholder-informed model to simulate sensitivity to climate change

  2020cited by this paper
• Farming systems and Conservation Agriculture: Technology, structures and agency in Malawi

  2020cited by this paper
• Exploring the Need for Developing Impact-Based Forecasting in West Africa

  2020cited by this paper
• Evolution of national climate adaptation agendas in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia: the role of national leadership and international donors

  2020cited by this paper
• Grounding the helicopters

  2020cited by this paper
• Bridging the disciplinary gap in conservation agriculture research, in Malawi. A review

  2020cited by this paper
• Conservation agriculture enhances resistance of maize to climate stress in a Malawian medium-term trial

  2019cited by this paper
• An Empirically Derived Conceptual Framework to Assess Dis-Adoption of Conservation Agriculture: Multiple Drivers and Institutional Deficiencies

  2019cited by this paper
• The adaptive capacity of maize-based conservation agriculture systems to climate stress in tropical and subtropical environments: A meta-regression of yields

  2018influential reference
• Gender and climate risk management: evidence of climate information use in Ghana

  2018cited by this paper
• Identifying climate services needs for national planning: insights from Malawi

  2017cited by this paper
• Adaptation opportunities and maladaptive outcomes in climate vulnerability hotspots of northern Ghana

  2017cited by this paper
• Mainstreaming conservation agriculture in Malawi: Knowledge gaps and institutional barriers.

  2017cited by this paper
• Global Challenges Research Fund

  2016cited by this paper
• Exploring Power and Procedural Justice Within Climate Compatible Development Project Design

  2016cited by this paper
• Critical reflection on knowledge and narratives of conservation agriculture

  2015cited by this paper
• Climate change 2014: impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability - Part B: regional aspects - Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

  2014cited by this paper
• Inequality, communication, and the avoidance of disastrous climate change in a public goods game

  2011cited by this paper
• Soil health and sustainability: managing the biotic component of soil quality

  2000cited by this paper
• Africa

  1997cited by this paper

• CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY: PATHWAYS TO ACHIEVE SDG2- FOOD AND NUTRITION SECURITY IN BRICS ECONOMIES

  2026cites this paper
• The effect of heterogeneous adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices on household food and nutrition security of small-scale urban crop farmers in eThekwini Municipality

  2025cites this paper
• Ensuring Africa’s Food Security by 2050: The Role of Population Growth, Climate-Resilient Strategies, and Putative Pathways to Resilience

  2025cites this paper
• Investigating the impacts of climate induced migration on food security in the Sudano-Sahelian geographical region of Nigeria.

  2025cites this paper
• Understanding the Barriers and Knowledge Gaps to Climate-Smart Agriculture and Climate Information Services: A Multi-Stakeholder Analysis of Smallholder Farmers’ Uptake in Ghana

  2025cites this paper
• A Review of Key Technologies for Green and Low-Carbon Future Buildings in China

  2025cites this paper
• Cost and benefit analysis of Climate-Smart Agriculture interventions in the dryland farming systems of northern Ghana

  2025cites this paper
• Determinants of the Joint Adoption of Climate-Smart Agriculture Practices by Agro-Pastoralists in Sokoto State, Nigeria

  2025cites this paper
• Effects of Climate-Smart Agriculture Technologies on Maize-Common Bean Intercrops Growth and Yield Performances in Smallholder Farmer’s Fields in Semi-Arid Areas, Tanzania

  2025cites this paper
• Advancing climate resilience in African agribusiness: strategies, innovations, and pathways for sustainable transformation

  2025cites this paper
• RAPTURE: Resilient Agricultural Practices for Transforming Uncertain and Resource-Scarce Environments Tool

  2025cites this paper
• On-grid vs. off-grid photovoltaic systems for smart greenhouses: a techno-economic case study

  2025cites this paper
• Continued use of climate-smart agricultural practices in central Uganda cattle corridor: a farming household typology perspective

  2025cites this paper
• Assessing Agricultural Impact on Greenhouse Gases in the European Union: A Climate-Smart Agriculture Perspective

  2024cites this paper
• Enhancing climate resilience in northern Ghana: A stochastic dominance analysis of risk-efficient climate-smart technologies for smallholder farmers

  2024cites this paper
• Mapping the Landscape of Climate-Smart Agriculture and Food Loss: A Bibliometric and Bibliographic Analysis

  2024cites this paper
• Effects of Information Providers, Channels and Types on the Adoption of Climate – Resilient Practices in Lesotho

  2024cites this paper
• A global systematic literature review on sustainable soil management practices (1994–2022)

  2023cites this paper
• CHAPTER 3: DEVELOPING THE AFRICA WE WANT: ACHIEVING AGENDA 2063 ALSO IMPROVES AIR QUALITY AND ADDRESSES CLIMATE CHANGE

  2023cites this paper
• Gender differential in choices of crop variety traits and climate‐smart cropping systems: Insights from sorghum and millet farmers in drought‐prone areas of Malawi

  2023cites this paper
• Effect of Climate Smart Agriculture Innovations on Climate Resilience among Smallholder Farmers: Empirical Evidence from the Choke Mountain Watershed of the Blue Nile Highlands of Ethiopia

  2023cites this paper
• Trade-offs, synergies and acceptability of climate smart agricultural practices by smallholder farmers in rural Ghana

  2023cites this paper
• Typologies and drivers of the adoption of climate smart agricultural practices by smallholder farmers in rural Ghana

  2023cites this paper
• Building climate resilience through crop residue utilization: Experiences of Ghanaian smallholder farmers

  2023cites this paper
• Adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices by smallholder farmers in rural Ghana: An application of the theory of planned behavior

  2022cites this paper