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The State of African Agricultural Adaptation, 2016–2026: Assessment and Roadmap to 2036

  • Publication | 2026
Global Food and Nutrition Security

Africa has shown ambition; what it has not yet managed is delivery. Across 53 national climate plans, African states have set out roughly USD 566 billion of adaptation needs — about USD 56 billion a year. Yet barely 1.5 per cent of that can currently be followed through to delivery in national reporting, and only eleven of the 53 countries even hold all three Paris-Agreement instruments at once. The shortfall is not, in the main, one of intent. It is that the tools countries use to declare, plan, finance and account for adaptation still do not talk to one another. 

The fix we propose is deliberately small. A thin coordinating layer — a connective layer, in the report’s terms: money for project preparation, shared metrics, common templates and the slow work of getting ministries to pull in the same direction, not for adaptation projects themselves — would cost USD 100–200 million across the whole decade. That is less than one per cent of what the continent says it needs in a single year. It builds no new institution; it makes the ones Africa already has work together. The tens of billions a year for irrigation, seeds and infrastructure remain indispensable — this is not a substitute for them, and the report never pretends otherwise.

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Adaptation of African Agriculture
Geographic coverageSub-Saharan Africa
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22 Sep 2026

Knowledge service | MetadataGlobal Food and Nutrition Security | Sustainable Food Systems | Food systems transformation
Digital Europa Thesaurus (DET)adaptation to climate changeMonitoringpolicymakingagricultural productiondisaster risk reductiondevelopment aid
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