Systematic review on climate-smart agriculture in Ethiopia: evidence on resilience and food security outcomes

Ethiopia’s agricultural sector, predominantly rain-fed and dominated by smallholder farming, is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, including erratic rainfall, rising temperatures, and recurrent droughts, which significantly undermine food security and household resilience. Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) has emerged as a promising solution that integrates productivity, climate adaptation, and environmental sustainability. Thus, this review contributes by systematically linking CSA practices with resilience capacities (absorptive, adaptive, transformative), which has been underexplored in the Ethiopian context to achieve food security. Using the PRISMA approach, 115 published articles between 2013 and 2025 were initially reviewed to assess the effectiveness of CSA practices, their adoption barriers, and institutional responses. The analysis is structured around three resilience dimensions, absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacities, based on the TANGO framework. The results reveal that several climate-smart agricultural practices in Ethiopia are improving household resilience and food security outcomes. The key practices are soil and water conservation, agroforestry, crop diversification, conservation agriculture, climate information services, improved crop and livestock varieties, integrated soil fertility management, and water harvesting and irrigation systems. These interventions contribute to improved agricultural productivity, livelihood diversification, and enhanced household food security across food availability, access, utilization, and stability dimensions. Evidence further indicates that CSA strengthens household resilience through absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacities by improving coping mechanisms, enhancing adaptive decision-making, and supporting long-term livelihood transformation. CSA adoption, however, is shaped by demographic, socioeconomic, institutional, agro-ecological, and sociocultural factors. Despite substantial opportunities, including indigenous knowledge systems, expanding farmer networks, and climate information services, implementation remains constrained by weak institutional coordination, financial limitations, inadequate extension support, and uneven access to information and resources. Therefore, the review demonstrates that CSA serves as an important pathway for strengthening resilience and improving food security in Ethiopia; however, scaling its benefits requires integrated policies, strengthened institutions, and context-specific interventions that address local realities and inequalities.