Philip Antwi-Agyei

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology

This study evaluates new multi-scale, multi-indicator methods for assessing the vulnerability of crop production to drought at a national and regional scale. It does this by identifying differences across and within ten regions of Ghana, a country that faces many climate and crop production challenges typical of sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, w...

Climate variability poses a significant threat to many sectors of Sub-Saharan Africa’s economy. Agriculture is one of the most climate sensitive sectors because of its dependence on rain-fed cultivation. This paper identifies the main adaptation strategies used by farming households in the Sudan savannah and forest-savannah transitional agro-ecolog...

Climate change and variability continue to adversely impact the livelihoods of many agriculture-dependent households in dryland sub-Saharan Africa. Climate vulnerability is shaped by institutions and socioeconomic processes including land tenure arrangements and infrastructural development. This paper employs a participatory mixed-method approach i...

Smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are confronted with climatic and non-climatic stressors. Research attention has focused on climatic stressors, such as rainfall variability, with few empirical studies exploring non-climatic stressors and how these interact with climatic stressors at multiple scales to affect food security and livelihoods....

How climate change adaptation practices can constrain development and deliver maladaptive outcomes in vulnerability hotspots is yet to be explored in-depth using case study analyses. This paper explores the effects of climate change coping and adaptation responses in three case study villages across the Central Gonja district of northern Ghana. The...

Impacts of climate change on climate-vulnerable populations receive little attention in the literature compared to the general population across the globe, including Ghana's Northern Region, than it has on the availability, sources, and kinds of climate services. Understanding the level of effects of utilizing climate information on farmers' liveli...

Africa's smallholding agriculture is susceptible to changing climate. The interaction between several biophysical, socioeconomic, cultural and political stressors increases smallholder farmers' vulnerability, thereby, limiting their adaptive capacity. Whereas changing climate is acknowledged as a significant problem with a detrimental effect on sus...

Perennial woody crops, which are crucial to our diets and global economies, have the potential to play a major role in achieving multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals pertaining to biodiversity conservation, socio-economic development and climate change mitigation. However, this potential is hindered by insufficient scientific and policy attent...

Despite the substantial injuries and fatalities from Road Traffic Crashes (RTCs), evidence of climate change's impact on RTCs in Ghana is lacking. This study assessed the impact of climate change on RTCs in Ghana by combining quantitative (Mann-Kendall trend tests, Continuous Wavelet Transform analysis, causal inference analysis) and qualitative (1...

Climate‐smart agriculture (CSA) serves as a credible mechanism to simultaneously address food security, climate change, and agricultural productivity. Despite the widespread adoption of CSA approaches across West Africa, many countries have still not been able to resolve the problems of food insecurity and rural poverty. This systematic review eval...

Gender‐differentiated roles, responsibilities, access, rights, and knowledge gaps shape women's vulnerability to climate change. This is especially critical for women farmers whose livelihoods are climate‐dependent. A key component in building women farmers’ resilience to climate change is deepening their adaptive capacity. Therefore, this research...

Studies have explored social capital (SC) in diverse ways. Still, little is known in the literature about how its functional areas, including bonding, bridging and linking relationships, interact to facilitate sustainable development, particularly in agricultural diversification. We address this gap by using the rural web and the social capital fra...

Climate change poses a significant threat to livestock production and animal health globally, with particular implications for Burkina Faso. This study explores the links between climate patterns and the resurgence of five major livestock diseases in Burkina Faso, using climatic records from 1961-2020 and veterinary clinical data from 2003 - 2019 c...

We assessed how people adapt to climate change in the context of forests through a systematic review of the international empirical research literature. We found that drought, precipitation variability, extreme precipitation and flooding, and extreme heat were the climatic stressors to which responses were most frequently documented. Individuals an...

Climate change adversely impacts food and feed production, depletes water, and increases the vulnerability of the people living within arid and semi-arid areas. The current study aims to assess crop–livestock water productivity within such drought-recurrent or water-stressed regions. This was done through secondary data collection and interviews fr...

Land use change has led to drastic soil degradation and greenhouse gas emissions with implications for sustainable agriculture and climate change. Here, we report soil carbon stock and nutrient compositions of four land use types in the forest-savanna transition agro-ecological zone of Ghana. These were cashew, mango, oil palm and arable land. Soil...

Climate adaptation, while urgent, is complicated by a slew of unknowns and uncertainties through insufficient scholarship. This study addresses these slews of unknowns surrounding local adaptation to climate change and associated determinants among rainfed smallholder farmers in rural Ghana. We used a mixed-method approach to collect primary data f...

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) remains a key strategy for sustaining agricultural systems and achieving food security and nutrition. Despite this, uncertainty remains on how intra-gendered dynamics influence its adoption in dryland farming systems. This study implements both quantitative and qualitative approaches including household surveys, key...

Increasing renewable energy capacity to achieve climate goals will necessitate the rapid development of utility-scale solar plants throughout Ghana. Situated in the impoverished Upper West region, the Kaleo Lawra solar plant serves as a grim admonition. Drawing from mixed methods fieldwork and the literatures of feminist political ecology and criti...

Understanding past climate trends and their impacts in the Sahel region is fundamental for climate change (CC) adaptation and mitigation. This study analyses climate trends from 1961 to 2020 in three climatic zones in Burkina Faso and the impacts of CC on five major crops production. Long time series of daily rainfall and temperature data from Nati...

The Working Group II contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides a comprehensive assessment of the scientific literature relevant to climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. The report recognizes the interactions of climate, ecosystems and biodiversity, and human societie...

A major limiting factor affecting the uptake of conservation agriculture practices in smallholder farming systems in sub‐Saharan Africa is the limited availability of sufficient crop residues for use as surface mulch. This paper assesses the trade‐offs in crop residue utilization among smallholder farmers and its implications for soil management in...

This paper reviewed a body of literature on climate adaptation options in sub‐Saharan Africa's (SSA) smallholding agriculture and complemented it with a case study involving experts interviews, focus group discussions, large‐scale household surveys, and farmer practices observation while drawing insight from the concept of “everyday adaptation and...

The impacts of climate change on crop yields are receiving renewed interest, with focus on cereals and staple crops at the regional and national scales. Yet, the impacts of climate variability on the yields of leguminous crops in the local context has not been explored. Thus, an in-depth understanding of climate change variability in the local cont...

Climate smart agriculture (CSA) has been promoted by governments and international development institutions as an intervention to address climate change and deliver triple wins. Yet, the trade-offs and synergies associated with CSA practices have not been explored. This study develops composite indices for prioritizing CSA practices to better infor...

Policymakers underestimate the extensive role of indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) in national climate adaptation action. Drawing from the mainstreaming theory, this study examined the extent to which ILK systems have been mainstreamed into Ghana's climate policy framework for realizing adaptation outcomes in agriculture and rural development. T...

Land use changes affect soil and biomass carbon sequestration potential of the agroecosystems of most Sub-Sahara Africa facing rising temperatures due to global climate change. One such ecosystem is the Owabi reservoir catchment in Ghana, which has undergone extensive changes in land use through urbanization. Our study aimed to determine the impact...

This study assessed the adaptive capacity of smallholder cocoa farmers to address the adverse effects of climate variability in the Adansi South District of the Ashanti Region, Ghana. Specifically, the study sought to (i) assess the perception of the smallholder cocoa farmers to climate variability; (ii) determine the perceived effects of climate v...

Over the last few years, the occurrence and severity of climate change-induced floods in urban Kumasi, Ghana, have increased considerably, leading to devastating effects on both lives and properties. Yet, policy developments have often ignored the perspectives of residents who have experienced these floods. This study used a mixed-method approach i...

Provision of weather and climate services are expected to improve the capacity for rural households’ preparedness and response plans to weather shocks. With increase in public investments in developing and communicating weather information on local scale in Nigeria, uncertainty in timescales that meet farmers’ needs and economic value of the inform...

The Poster is about providing crop-livestock integration measurement tools for a holistic characterization of this sustainable practice within agricultural landscape in Burkina Faso.

Global climate change is affecting people's livelihoods, especially smallholder farmers across West Africa. Crop-livestock integration (CLI) offers opportunity for farmers to build climate resilience to the changing climate. Nevertheless, such a mixed-farming system is poorly characterised across West Africa and within Burkina Faso in particular. T...

Global climate change is affecting people's livelihoods, especially smallholder farmers across West Africa. Crop-livestock integration (CLI) offers opportunity for farmers to build climate resilience to the changing climate. Nevertheless, the role of such a mixed-farming system is poorly understood in Burkina Faso specifically on its effectiveness...

Agroecological practices are promoted as a more proactive approach than conventional agriculture to achieving a collective global response to climate change and variability while building robust and resilient agricultural systems to meet food needs and protect the integrity of ecosystems. There is relatively limited evidence on the key traditional...

Climate change significantly impacts agriculture. Building an informed and collaborative process among stakeholders remains vital in minimizing climate risks and building climate-adaptive and resilient agricultural systems in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, stakeholders’ involvement and collaboration in agriculture decision-making are framed by...

Climate change significantly impacts agriculture. Building an informed and collaborative process among stakeholders remains vital in minimizing climate risks and building climate-adaptive and resilient agricultural systems in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, stakeholders’ involvement and collaboration in agriculture decision-making are framed by...

Climate-Smart Agricultural (CSA) practices are crucial in managing climatic shocks faced by smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. However, evidence on the socio-psychological drivers of farmers’ adoption of CSA practices remains limited. This study employed the Theory of Planned Behavior framework to analyze smallholder farmers’ intention and...

West African Sahel constitutes one of the most vulnerable region to climate change and variability which negatively affect human and the ecological systems. Understanding past climate and impacts in the Sahel region is fundamental for climate change adaptation and mitigation. This study examines the impacts of climate extremes (computed in the obje...

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to accelerate food production effort to achieve the UN SDG two, i. e., zero hunger target by 2030, is gaining momentum across the global food security discourse. One way to accelerate food production is to adopt improved seeds and technologies that may close existing yield gaps and support food security effort...

Mango production has the potential to boost Ghana's socioeconomic growth and development. However, mango is susceptible to climate change risk resulting in the adoption of innovations among mango farmers. Drawing on the protection motivation and the innovation diffusion theories, this study assesses the effect of climate change perceptions on the a...

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to accelerate food production efforts to achieve the UN SDG two, i. e., zero hunger target by 2030, is gaining momentum across the global food security discourse. One way to accelerate food production is to adopt improved seeds and technologies that may close existing yield gaps and support food security effor...

The provision of timely and precise weather information could reduce the vulnerability of people to climate change risks. In this study, we conduct a systematic review to synthesize the existing evidence on weather information services for the agriculture, water, and energy sectors of East and West Africa and identify priorities for future research...

While adaptation interventions offer a window of opportunity to mitigate the susceptibility of mango seedlings to adverse impact of climate variability and change, there is a scarcity of information on how mango seedlings producers respond to climate variability and change in Ghana. Using a qualitative case study with 20 mango seedlings producers s...

This policy brief on the potential role of Crop-Livestock Integration as a Way to build Farmers' Climate resilience aims to give Insights to policy makers for informed decision making. The key messages are: • Croplivestock integration (CLI) is underperforming in Burkina Faso and can be effectively improved. • CLI strongly associate with croplivest...

Over the last few years, the recurrence and severity of floods in urban Kumasi have increased considerably with devastating consequences for both lives and properties. Yet, the perspectives of residents who have experienced these floods have often been ignored in policy developments. This study used a mixed-methods approach including household surv...

Weather and climate information trigger early action and facilitate better disaster preparedness. Decision-driven and people-centered weather and climate information are pivotal for the effective uptake. The challenge of early responses in preparing for drought hazard is growing in the dry savannah of tropical sub-Saharan African countries. This pa...

Climate information services can build the resilience of African farmers to address the increasing threats associated with climate change. This study used household surveys with 200 farmers and focus group discussions to identify the types of climate information services available to farming households in two selected districts (Tolon and Nanton) i...

Attainment of the government of Ghana’s ambitious target of providing safe and reliable basic water services to all persons in Ghana by 2025 requires urgent need to unravel localized barriers to achieve universal access and sustain it. Using the Life Cycle Cost Approach, this paper provides a framework in policy planning and estimates the quantum o...

This study examined the factors that determine the adoption of CSA practices in dryland farming systems. The study answers the following questions: (i) what are the typologies of CSA practices available to smallholder farmers in rural Ghana?, (ii) what is the adoption rate of CSA practices among smallholder farmers? and, (iii) what are the socioeco...

Rooted in the concept of adaptation are change, action, stimulus, means and end. Whilst these elements are fundamental in clarifying the complex actor relationships surrounding adaptation, literature has tended to concentrate on the end (adaptation practice). Inherent in the provisions of interventions aimed at minimizing the specific impacts of cl...

Rain‐fed agriculture is predominantly the primary source of livelihood in sub‐Saharan Africa. In Ghana, it employs over 60% of the population and contributes to about 30% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Despite the relevance of rain‐fed agriculture to the socioe‐conomic development of the country, studies investigating the impacts of climate v...

This paper explored the extent to which the awareness of climate change affects the choice of climate change adaptation practice by smallholder pineapple farmers. This study used a cross-sectional data collected from 150 farmers in the Nsawam Adoagyiri Municipality, Ghana. We applied the Latent Class Analysis (LCA) to identify sub-population of pin...

The ‘silent revolution’ of numerical weather prediction (NWP) has led to significant social benefits and billions of dollars in economic benefits to mid-latitude countries, however the level of benefit in sub-Saharan Africa has been very limited, despite the potential to save lives, improve livelihoods, protect property and infrastructure and boost...

Assessing global progress on human adaptation to climate change is an urgent priority. Although the literature on adaptation to climate change is rapidly expanding, little is known about the actual extent of implementation. We systematically screened >48,000 articles using machine learning methods and a global network of 126 researchers. Our synthe...

This paper examined the prioritized climate-smart agricultural practices by smallholder farmers, the motivations of adopting climate-smart agricultural practices, the enablers to the successful adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices, and the barriers to the successful adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices in the transitional an...

Agriculture is one of the sectors most susceptible to changes in climatic conditions. The impact is even stronger in Africa, where rain-fed agriculture is vital for daily subsistence, but where adaptive capacity is low. It is therefore crucial to increase the understanding of the actual climate change dynamics on agricultural productivity. This stu...

Agriculture in Ghana is vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate variability. This poses a challenge to food security across the country. Despite this vulnerability, limited research has been conducted to understand the effect of climate variability on the yields of staple food crops in Ghana. This study assessed the effect of climate variabili...

Understanding gendered adaptation practices among smallholder cocoa farmers is crucial to ensuring sustainable cocoa production in Ghana. This study examined the gendered perceptions and adaptation practices of small- holder cocoa farmers to climate variability in three selected communities (Breman Ayipey, Breman Baako and Breman Kuntanase) in the...

Efforts to meet the growing demand for food across Africa have led to unsustainable land management practices that weaken the resilience of African Food Systems. Soil health is key to building more climate-resilient agricultural systems and can be improved through Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices that also enhance soil carbon storage. Many...

Africa is poised for a revolution in the quality and relevance of weather predictions, with potential for great benefits in terms of human and economic security. This revolution will be driven by recent international progress in nowcasting, numerical weather prediction, theoretical tropical dynamics and forecast communication, but will depend on su...

A better understanding of soil fertility factors that constraint positive crop response to fertilizer inputs will facilitate the improvement of soil nutrient management. In this study, a nutrient omission trial was carried out in a greenhouse condition to identify soil chemical properties limiting in non-responsive soils and to ascertain their effe...

Ghana's susceptibility to climate change is well documented and the agricultural sector which is the backbone of the country's economy is one of the most vulnerable sectors to the adverse effects of climate change. This study employed both quantitative and qualitative research methods including household surveys and focus group discussions to exami...

There is a huge opportunity for the African continent to benefit from the ‘silent revolution’ in weather forecasting that has been realised in the mid-latitudes throughout the twentieth century. While there are tremendous societal and economic benefits from advancing the science behind weather forecasting in sub-Saharan Africa, there are also signi...

Whilst the capability of climate services to reduce climate impacts is alluring, empirical evidence on how best to mainstream climate information services in Africa is lacking. This paper determines how climate information services have been incorporated into national policies by Anglophone West African states for building agricultural resilience a...

Empirical evidence on the opportunities and barriers to the uptake of climate services by smallholder farmers for resilient agricultural systems in sub-Saharan Africa is limited. This paper addresses this important gap by evaluating the opportunities and barriers to the uptake of climate information (from short-term weather forecasts, through seaso...

Climate variability coupled with land use and land cover changes have resulted in significant changes in forest reserves in Ghana with major implications for rural livelihoods. Understanding the link between climate variability, land use and land cover changes and rural livelihoods is key for decision-making, especially regarding sustainable manage...

The importance of extension services in helping smallholder farmers to address the many challenges of agricultural production cannot be over-emphasized. However, relatively few studies have been conducted that investigate how the capacities of agricultural extension agents can be built to more effectively assist smallholder farmers in managing clim...

We present the first systematic, global stocktake of the academic literature on human adaptation. We screen 48,316 documents and identify 1,682 articles that present empirical research documenting human efforts to reduce risk from climate change and associated hazards. Coding and synthesizing this literature highlights that the overall extent of ad...

Evidence on how coping practices for immediate climate variations can transform into long-term adaptive capacity are relatively limited. This study addressed this gap by identifying the coping practices for short-term climate variations and the adaptation measures used by smallholder farmers to address future climate change in northeast Ghana. The...

Access to useful climate information is critical for adaptation needs of African smallholder farmers, yet empirical studies documenting the socioeconomic, environmental and household predictors of access to and willingness to pay for climate information services from a gendered perspective have been limited to date. This paper addresses this resear...

This study employed a mixed-methods approach to investigate the trends and drivers of land use and land cover changes from 1991 to 2015 in an urban forest reserve in Ghana. The specific objectives were to: i) determine the extent of land cover changes in the urban forest, and ii) ascertain the factors driving land cover changes in the urban forest....

While conventional weather forecasts focus on meteorological thresholds for extreme events, Impact-Based Forecasts (IBF) integrate information about the potential severity of weather impacts with their likelihood of occurrence. As IBF provides an indication of local risk, there is an increasing uptake of this approach globally. Despite the vulnerab...

Knowledge of strategies to improve farm household resilience to food insecurity and counter adverse weather events and poor resource endowment is a pre-requisite for implementing solutions fitting local conditions. This paper examines subsistence farmer knowledge of strategies to cope with food insecurity and progressive climate change in the Lower...

The vulnerability of social-ecological systems in sub-Saharan Africa to climate variability and change means that there is an urgent need to better integrate weather and climate information into societal decision-making processes. Long-term climate adaptation in these regions has received increasing attention, with recent initiatives aiming to incr...

Reservoir catchments in Ghana have undergone significant changes in recent years with major implications for socioeconomic development and local livelihoods. We studied land use and land cover changes and their impacts on livelihoods in the Owabi reservoir catchment from 1970 to 2014 using Landsat, ERDAS Imagine and Arc Geographic Information Syste...

Tropical reservoirs are important for numerous socioeconomic and ecological reasons, including water supply, fishing and flood control. These functions are easily compromised, however, when reservoirs undergo accelerated sedimentation with increased inputs of chemical contaminants. The present study applied the concept of sediment core analysis to...

Climate change and variability impact on staple food crops present a daunting challenge in the 21st century. The study assesses future climate variability on maize and rice yield over a 30-year period by comparing the outcomes under two GCM models, namely, CSIRO_RCP4.5 and NOAA_RCP4.5 of Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and National Oceanic and...