Household surveys
Structured data collection sampled to support statements about a population rather than anecdotes about a site, covering service levels, expenditure and coping behaviour.
Agriculture and Food Systems
Building Resilient Agricultural Systems
Research on the livelihoods of smallholder farmers under rising climate pressure, and on the water, land and market systems that determine whether their production is viable.
Why this matters
Agriculture is how most households in sub-Saharan Africa live. It is also the sector most directly exposed to climate variability.
Agriculture is the main source of livelihood for most households in sub-Saharan Africa, employing more than 60% of the total population and contributing about 23% of the region’s total Gross Domestic Product. It is not a peripheral sector; it is the economic base.
It is also almost entirely rainfed. Only 6% of farmland in the region has access to irrigation, tying agricultural output to shifting rainfall patterns. According to the 2026 UN SDG 6 Synthesis Report, global water-use efficiency increased by 19.5% between 2015 and 2022, while 56% of monitored water bodies maintain good ambient water quality — critical benchmarks for sustaining agricultural productivity and food security.
That combination — high economic dependence, minimal irrigation and rising variability — is why we treat agriculture as a water and climate question as much as an agronomic one. The productive constraint is frequently not the seed or the practice but the reliability of water and the absence of any mechanism to absorb a bad season.
Markets complete the picture. Yield gains that cannot be stored, moved or sold do not translate into income, so our agricultural research follows the chain from field conditions through post-harvest handling to the terms on which smallholders reach a buyer.
6%
Of SSA farmland with access to irrigation
+19.5%
Global water-use efficiency gain (SDG 6.4)
56%
Monitored water bodies with good ambient quality (SDG 6.3)
What we work on
Four competencies within this thematic area.
01
Climate-Smart Agricultural Systems & Sustainable Intensification
Raising productivity while managing climate risk and the condition of the soil and water base it depends on.
02
Post-Harvest Handling, Storage & Loss Reduction
Losses between field and market, and the handling, storage and cold-chain measures that reduce them.
03
Inclusive Market Access & Agri-Food Value Chains
How smallholders reach buyers, and where value accrues along agri-food chains.
04
Food Security, Nutrition & Resilient Livelihoods
Availability, access and nutritional outcomes, and the livelihood resilience that underpins them.
How we work
Our agricultural research is field-based and follows systems across sectoral boundaries.
Mixed-methods evaluation
Quantitative measurement paired with interviews and focus groups, so a result arrives with an explanation of the mechanism behind it.
Policy and regulatory analysis
Reading strategies, standards and regulations against one another to locate the contradictions, gaps and unfunded mandates that stall implementation.
Farm and household-level assessment
Production, input use, labour and income data collected at the level where agricultural decisions are actually made.
Value chain analysis
Tracing a commodity from field to buyer to establish where value accrues, where losses occur and which actors hold the leverage.
Geospatial and land-use analysis
Spatial analysis of cropping, water availability and land-use change, used to examine pressure and competition over time.
Work with us on agriculture
We work with agricultural agencies, research partners and funders on productivity, water and food-system research.