Climate change presents an enormous challenge to Africa’s food security, especially for smallholder food producers whose livelihoods depend on rainfed agricultural production systems. CSA offers solutions to sustainably increase agricultural productivity and farmers’ incomes without degrading natural resources, to adapt to climate change and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions where possible. This can be achieved through the adoption of numerous climate-smart practices and technologies, the support of effective enabling environments comprising strengthened institutions, relevant policy frameworks and innovative financing options, and the application of accurate and relevant CIS for informed decision-making.

There is much research and evidence to demonstrate the economic and production benefits that can be realised through access to robust climate information. In Rwanda, for example, farmers that regularly used CIS demonstrated productivity gains of 24%, and income gains of 30% more than the control population (Birachi et al., 2020). In Senegal, farmers with improved access to CIS realised up to 20% gains in income, which was attributed to improvements in land preparation, crop choice, and planting and harvesting dates (Chiputwa et al., 2020). In addition, economy-wide models suggest that the widespread use of CIS, in the form of seasonal forecasts, in Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Zambia can increase Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by an average of USD 113 million per annum (Rodrigues et al., 2016). More recently, in Ethiopia, an improved use of weather and climate services resulted in an estimated 5% gain in GDP (Beyene et al., 2020).

Despite the known multiple advantages of applying CSA at scale, agriculture in most African economies is still characterised by low productivity and poor resilience to climate change. This is partly attributed to the barriers of accessing agro-climatic information and knowledge, as well as other factors related to CIS and CSA uptake and scaling (Muhanguzi and Ngubiri, 2022). Access to extension services and information, including participation in capacity building and training, leads to a significant increase in the uptake of CSA (Ogisi and Begho, 2023). However, women farmers in particular have exceedingly low levels of access to extension and information, with studies indicating a reach of only 20% (Huyer et al., 2021). This is amplified when intersectionality (e.g. socio-economic class, race, ethnicity, age, religion, and caste) is considered (Dinh et al., 2022). In turn, these disparities in access to information affect the agricultural productivity of marginalised groups, such as young people, and present a missed opportunity for an all-inclusive, economy-wide response to addressing poverty and food insecurity.

Urgent efforts are therefore needed to ensure that extension channels for communicating climate information and climate-smart solutions to smallholder farmers are socially inclusive, reaching all members of farming communities, with a specific focus on access to women and youth. This requires specific efforts to ensure that the dissemination of information is strategic, targeted, and reaches diverse audiences with timely and contextualised messaging. Effective communication involves the exchange of ideas, opinions, knowledge and data so that the message and its purpose are clearly understood. Ultimately it should assist all farmers with identifying climate-related problems, raising awareness, encouraging dialogue, sharing solutions, and influencing behavioural change.

This requires specific efforts to ensure that the dissemination of information is strategic, targeted, and reaches diverse audiences with timely and contextualised messaging. Effective communication involves the exchange of ideas, opinions, knowledge and data so that the message and its purpose are clearly understood. Ultimately it should assist all farmers with identifying climate-related problems, raising awareness, encouraging dialogue, sharing solutions, and influencing behavioural change.

This report explores social inclusion1 in agricultural extension with a focus on communication methods for effective uptake of climate information and CSA practices. Different channels of extension are described with their associated learnings and innovative cases of gender and social inclusion are highlighted. Communication pathways and strategies are investigated for reaching marginalised groups and informing farm-level decision making and the associated advantages and disadvantages, including barriers to access, are indicated. The paper concludes with recommendations for socially inclusive and climate-smart agricultural extension.