Sustainable Farming in Practice: Building Resilient and Profitable Smallholder Agricultural Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa is at crossroads. With a rapidly growing population of 1.2 billion and changing climates, the continent faces major development challenges, including food insecurity, climate change, resource degradation, poverty, gender inequality, and social exclusion. While there are multiple competing narratives promoted in the high-input, industrialised world to address climate change and the resilience of agricultural systems (e.g., regenerative agriculture, agroecology), there is an ongoing debate and genuine questions about the appropriateness of these approaches to small-scale farmers in SSA. African agricultural systems are unique, characterised by low productivity, nutrient mining, land degradation, hoe culture, and fragmented and diversified small farms. Though environmental pollution and over-dependence on fossil fuel-powered mechanisation are rarely topping the priority list, climate change is becoming a major concern.