Climate-Smart Agriculture Adoption and Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is faced with the conundrum of food insecurity due to climate change effects. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is widely acknowledged as a way of promoting sustainable agriculture and food security. Given the importance of CSA in meeting food needs of households, the approach has received much attention in international, national, and local discussions. There exists extant literature on the concept in SSA; however, an assessment of how CSA has contributed to food security in the subregion is limited. As a result, this study aims to systematically review literature on climate-smart agriculture and its contribution to household food security in SSA. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis was adopted for the review. Using the Mendeley database, 26 studies that directly established the relationship between CSA and food security were reviewed to determine the pattern of issues. The finding of the results revealed that food availability featured predominantly in all the reviewed articles followed by food accessibility. Food stability was the least featured component of food security in all the reviewed articles. The review also found that household characteristics, farm-level characteristics, and institutional characteristics influenced farmers’ adoption decisions of CSA practices. Given the importance of food security in farm households in SSA and other destinations, achieving all the dimensions of food security means that there is the need for more research on food stability and utilization as majority of studies focused on food availability and accessibility. Again, governments in SSA should create avenues for building the capacity of farmer households to adopt CSA practices for improved food production and food security.