Tafadzwanashe Mabhaudhi

Smallholder farming systems in Sub-Saharan Africa are heterogeneous in resource endowment and livelihood objectives, posing challenges for effective agricultural interventions. This study characterises farm system diversity in Mtunthama Extension Planning Area, Kasungu District, Malawi, and evaluates the suitability of sustainable intensification innovations across farm types. Data were collected through focus group discussions and household surveys involving 43 farming households. Maize was the focus crop because it is the staple food crop of the whole of Malawi and the crop with which legumes are rotated or intercropped in the sustainable intensification options evaluated. Principal Component Analysis was used to construct a farm typology, while innovation suitability was assessed using a multi-criteria decision analysis framework. Four distinct farm types were identified: High-Resource-Endowed farms (HRE), Moderately resource-endowed farms with Diversified Cropping systems (MDV), Moderately resource-endowed farms with Mixed crop-livestock orientation (MCL), and Resource-Constrained Maize-dominated farms (RCM). The multi-criteria assessment revealed substantial variation in suitability across types. Conservation agriculture recorded the highest overall score (0.68), followed by intercropping (0.54), while strip cropping showed the lowest (0.25). MDV achieved the highest overall innovation score (0.66), whereas MCL and RCM showed limited uptake. These findings demonstrate that sustainable intensification effectiveness is shaped by resource endowment and trade-offs between productivity, income, and sustainability. The decoupling of maize yield and household income suggests intensification pathways are context-specific. The framework provides a useful approach for identifying suitable practice combinations for each farm type and for designing targeted interventions.

This paper develops the concept of Thinking Beyond Water , a transdisciplinary paradigm that reframes agricultural water management (AWM) as a systems catalyst for planetary health, equity, justice and resilience. Moving beyond conventional irrigation‐centric models, we reimagine AWM through integrative frameworks such as the planetary boundaries, the doughnut economy and just transitions. We examine the limits of efficiency metrics and highlight trade‐offs between equity and resource allocation and ecological externalities of infrastructure and technology‐led approaches. We argue that AWM decisions can reinforce exclusion, ecological degradation and policy fragmentation when they are not assessed against planetary health criteria. Thinking beyond water does not replace nexus, systems or resilience approaches; it connects them to explicit planetary thresholds, justice criteria and governance. We set out three propositions: a systemic appraisal matrix that distinguishes threshold criteria that cannot be traded off against productivity from criteria that are scored and weighted; a mapping of financing instruments to the barriers they address and the safeguards they require; and a staged process for reorienting National irrigation plans. Ultimately, we propose that water must be seen not as an isolated input–output for agriculture but as a systems connector linking hydrological integrity, human and ecosystem health and human dignity across scales.

Smallholder farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa are highly heterogeneous, resulting in differences in farmers’ capacities, priorities, and responses to sustainable intensification (SI) innovations. This study assessed farmers’ perceptions of six SI innovations and evaluated their suitability across four farm typologies in the Mtunthama Extension Planning Area, Central Malawi. A mixed-methods participatory approach involving focus group discussions and farmer-led innovation ranking was used across 44 trial farmers. Qualitative data were analysed using thematic content analysis, while preference rankings were converted into weighted standardised scores for comparison across farm types. Kruskal–Wallis tests were applied to assess whether maize grain yield differed significantly across farm typologies by treatment. Farmers generally perceived SI innovations positively, identifying improved yields, soil fertility, food security, dietary diversity, and climate resilience as major benefits. Labour requirements, input constraints, management complexity, and limited training were identified as key barriers. Innovation preferences differed across farm typologies, reflecting variations in household resource endowment and livelihood strategies. Although conventional ridging with continuous sole maize received the highest proportion of first-choice rankings, conservation agriculture incorporating legumes, particularly maize-cowpea double-row strip cropping, achieved the highest overall preference scores across farm types. Yield analysis revealed significant differences across farm typologies for CA Maize-Lablab Rotation (H = 9.823, p = 0.020) and Conventional Maize (H = 12.834, p = 0.005), with resource-constrained farmers consistently recording lower yields. Field days attended by 253 independent observers confirmed community-level preference for cowpea-based CA innovations, with maize-cowpea strip cropping receiving the highest vote share at both sites. Post-project follow-up revealed that 68 out of 253 field day observers (26.9%) independently adopted cowpea-based conservation agriculture in the following season, of whom 58.8% were women. Adoption was driven by the early maturity of the cowpea variety under climate variability and access to a ready vendor market. These findings demonstrate that integrating farm typology analysis with participatory innovation assessment and post-project tracking improves the targeting of SI interventions and supports the design of context-specific innovation packages more likely to achieve sustained adoption than blanket technology recommendations.

Meaningful youth engagement in climate policy, resilience-building, and agrifood system transformation is vital to ensuring that young people are prioritised in national and global agendas. This review situates youth resilience within the context of climate justice, recognising that those in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) disproportionately experience climate-related shocks due to systemic inequalities. Guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic and Meta-Analyses Protocol framework, a scoping review was undertaken to examine how youth in LMICs experience and respond to agrifood system vulnerabilities arising from climate change, economic disruptions (including COVID-19), and conflict, with a focus on education and employment outcomes. Systems thinking served as the central analytical approach to identify interdependencies, feedback loops, leverage points, and resilience pathways. The findings reveal limited research quantifying youth-specific vulnerabilities and resilience strategies within agrifood systems. While broad impacts are recognised, youth agency and adaptive capacities remain underexplored. The interactions among climate impacts, contextual vulnerability, health-productivity constraints, food insecurity and governance conditions create compounding risks that exacerbate food insecurity and social inequity among rural and urban youth. To address these gaps, the study proposes a conceptual framework that integrates climate justice principles into resilience-building strategies, promoting equitable access to resources, inclusive governance, and youth-led adaptation. By mapping interconnections across agrifood systems, climate, equity, education, and employment, the study charts resilience pathways toward socially inclusive, climate-adaptive, and economically sustainable food systems, underscoring the need for policies and research that centre youth agency and lived experiences.

Bambara groundnut ( Vigna subterranea ) is a resilient indigenous African legume with potential for improving food and nutrition security in semi-arid environments. However, conventional land suitability assessments often rely on static climatic averages, which fail to capture the dynamic interactions between climate variability and crop phenology. This study proposes a novel, process-based framework that integrates the AquaCrop simulation model with a custom frost-trigger algorithm to map land suitability and optimal planting dates across 5,838 altitude zones in Southern Africa. By simulating crop growth dynamics over 49 consecutive seasons, the framework explicitly accounts for inter-seasonal variability and extreme events, specifically frost and water stress, that are typically overlooked in conventional assessments. A sequential filtering procedure was applied to exclude unsuitable areas based on seasonal rainfall thresholds, risk of crop failure, and variability in water productivity. Findings indicate that October is the most favourable planting month, as later sowings face increased yield reductions due to potential frost risk. Accounting for frost occurrence reduced suitable growing areas by 28%, with refined land-use filtering further reducing viable area by 20%. These results highlight the critical role of dynamic environmental stressors in accurately assessing crop suitability. Ultimately, this framework provides a scalable tool for climate-smart agricultural planning, offering a more robust approach to identifying viable production zones for resilient underutilised crops.