Exploring the possibilities and limitations of climate-smart agriculture for SDG 2 in West Africa

Climate change continues to exacerbate food insecurity across West Africa, posing a major threat to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG 2: Zero Hunger). Despite the multifarious interventions implemented to mitigate its effects, climate vagaries such as floods, erratic weather patterns, droughts, and farmer-herder conflict, as well as weak policy implementation, have coincided with continued population growth, thereby worsening food insecurity in the sub-region. This study examines the possibilities and limitations of engaging climate-smart technologies to achieve SDG 2 in West Africa. The study utilized secondary data sources with the aid of a qualitative methodology grounded in an integrative review, guided by the PRISMA 2020 guidelines. The study narrowed its analysis to 85 relevant studies retrieved from electronic databases such as Scopus, Google Scholar, and EBSCOhost. The entire body of literature on the research was synthesized and consolidated through three theoretical frameworks: Climate Resilience Theory, the Sustainable Food Systems (SFS) Framework, and Agricultural Innovation Diffusion Theory. Findings indicate that while climate-smart agriculture (CSA) recorded a wide range of successes in countries such as Mali, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, and Burkina Faso, its adoption rates were notably low in the sub-continent due to the challenges of technological know-how, illiteracy, and weak government policies, among other factors. We concluded that achieving SDG 2 requires a holistic ecosystem approach that integrates digital literacy and climate-smart outputs into regional initiatives such as the WAICSA framework, strengthens regional cooperation, and encourages culturally sensitive technologies to mitigate the sub-region’s vulnerability to persistent food deficit fueled by a worsening climate trajectory.