Climate change is a major constraint to the progress of Africa’s agriculture, food, and nutrition security; its effect is tied to geographical position and driven by the limited adaptive capacity of the agricultural households. The most vulnerable stakeholder group are the smallholder farming households with limited resources and knowledge of adaptation and mitigation techniques. Sub-Saharan Africa owns more than 60% of the world’s arable land with over 85% of the farmers being smallholder farmers, who are predisposed to various risks. This paper analyzes the adoption of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) processes and technologies by smallholder farming households in Sub-Saharan Africa. The study used mixed methods and an integrative literature review. This review indicated that the knowledge of CSA technologies by smallholder farmers in Africa is increasing and, thus, concerted efforts to continuously generate CSA technology would contribute to the desired positive outcome. To accelerate the pace of adoption and use of the technologies, the linkage of farmers, researchers, and extension practitioners is needed. Measures should also be put in place to ensure that CSA actions are implemented using bottom-up approaches.
Malnutrition is a big problem on the African continent, especially among children ages zero to twenty-four months up till a time that covers the 1st 1000 days of life. Expert opinion suggests that Africa could integrate more commodities into its food systems to solve this problem, especially using its underutilized food commodities. These commodities are known to thrive very well in their various ecological zones. Indigenous food commodities are nutrient-dense, but the limitation in their use have left their potential untapped. The Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa organized a webinar to seek African stakeholders' opinions on the pathway to integrating forgotten Food into the African food system. This study extracted information from the stakeholder’s interaction in the webinar and used an integrative literature review method to draw inferences. The study suggests that considerable efforts are required to integrate the forgotten food commodities into the African food systems to enhance food security and sustainable agricultural livelihood. The needed actions include awareness creation on the importance of the forgotten food commodities, the establishment of a robust research program, active private sector engagement for investment into production, value chain development, and investment into commodity development infrastructures and businesses.
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