Written by Dr Ibrahima Aidara

1.  Introduction

West Africa is one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change, with increasing frequency and intensity of climate shocks, particularly droughts, floods, and erratic rainfall patterns, posing a direct threat to rural livelihoods and food systems. This is despite Africa contributes the least to greenhouse emissions. Smallholder farmers, who represent over 70% of the region’s rural population, are disproportionately exposed to these risks. Despite their central role in ensuring food security and rural employment, smallholders receive less than 1% of global climate finance, highlighting a severe gap in both financial inclusion and adaptive capacity.

This exposure to climate variability is not only a source of agronomic risk but also a driver of chronic poverty and social vulnerability. Weather-related crop failures often result in sharp income losses, triggering a cascade of negative coping mechanisms: distress sales of productive assets, increased reliance on informal credit, withdrawal of children from school, reduced food intake, poor heath outcomes, heightened insecurity, violent conflicts, irregular migration and climate refugees. The compounding effects of such shocks undermine both short-term welfare and long-term development prospects.

In parallel, West African countries face a growing imperative to develop climate-resilient social protection systems, frameworks that can shield the most vulnerable from climate-induced poverty traps while fostering resilience and inclusive growth. Traditional approaches to social protection, centered on basic income support, are increasingly being rethought in favor of more dynamic, climate-responsive models that blend adaptive cash transfers, climate risk insurance, and productive inclusion measures. This evolving paradigm, often referred to as Climate Resilient Social Protection (CRSP), seeks to integrate the objectives of social safety nets with the goals of climate adaptation and disaster risk management.

At the same time, financial services for smallholders, especially those designed to address climate risks, remain underdeveloped. Access to agricultural credit, insurance, and savings instruments is limited by high transaction costs, information gaps, and risk aversion among financial institutions. Emerging innovations such as index-based insurance, risk-contingent credit (RCC), and bundled finance mechanisms offer promising solutions. When well-designed, these instruments can enable smallholders to invest in productivity-enhancing technologies while protecting themselves against adverse climate events.

This article explores the convergence between CRSP and smallholder climate finance as a strategic entry point for sustainable rural transformation in West Africa. It argues that integrated policy frameworks, anchored in institutional coordination, regional risk pooling, and inclusive financial instruments, can simultaneously reduce vulnerability, enhance adaptive capacity, and unlock productive potential among rural populations. Drawing on key case studies, the article proposes actionable policy options to advance resilience at both household and system levels. The analysis emphasizes gender equity, fiscal efficiency, and scalability as guiding principles in the design of future interventions. Ultimately, this article aims to promote and support a policy dialogue that bridges the silos of social protection and agricultural finance, laying the groundwork for a resilient, inclusive, and climate-smart rural development trajectory in West Africa.

2.  Climate Resilient Social Protection (CRSP)

Climate Resilient Social Protection (CRSP) represents a paradigm shift in social policy; whereby traditional safety nets are reconfigured to anticipate, absorb, and adapt to climate-induced risks. Unlike reactive, ad hoc responses to disasters, CRSP aims to build predictable, scalable, and adaptive systems that not only protect vulnerable populations but also enable them to strengthen long-term resilience. For smallholder farmers in West Africa, CRSP offers a promising bridge between social assistance and climate adaptation, by embedding risk financing, early warning systems, and productive inclusion into the social protection framework. At its core, CRSP is built around three interlinked policy instruments:

• Adaptive cash transfers that scale in anticipation of or response to climate shocks.
• Risk layering through tools such as weather index insurance and contingency funds.
• Productive inclusion strategies, including training, savings, and asset transfers that help beneficiaries move from vulnerability to sustainable livelihoods.

The following two flagship initiatives illustrate how CRSP is being implemented in West Africa, highlighting institutional design, operational challenges, and measurable impacts.

2.1  Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program (SASPP)

Launched in 2014 and currently operational across six Sahelian countries – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal – the SASPP offers a comprehensive model of CRSP integration. Supported by the World Bank and a consortium of donors, SASPP aims to strengthen national social protection systems while embedding climate responsiveness at multiple levels.

Its architecture includes:

• Regular cash transfers to chronically poor households.
  • Scalable components that allow rapid vertical and horizontal expansion in response to climatic shocks.
  • Early warning systems linked to climate and food security data, enabling preemptive disbursements.
  • Productive inclusion packages, including entrepreneurship training, support to savings groups, and vocational skills development.

A key innovation of SASPP is its alignment with national Disaster Risk Management (DRM) strategies. For example, in Niger and Burkina Faso, SASPP uses real-time drought monitoring data to trigger early cash assistance to affected households, reducing post-shock recovery time and preventing asset depletion. SASPP also invests in institutional capacity building, helping governments digitize beneficiary registries, automate payments, and coordinate social protection with emergency response systems. Quantitative evidence points to meaningful outcomes:

• Improved household food security during lean seasons.
  • Increased participation of women in savings groups.
  • Reduction in harmful coping strategies such as child labor or early marriage.

The SASPP model demonstrates that social protection can serve as a frontline defense against climate vulnerability, provided it is flexible, data-driven, and integrated with broader resilience-building efforts.

2.2  Green Climate Fund – R4 Initiative (Senegal)

The R4 Rural Resilience Initiative, implemented in Senegal since 2017 through a partnership involving the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the World Food Program (WFP), and national institutions, exemplifies a multi-pillar approach to CRSP with a strong emphasis on climate risk insurance and resource management.

The initiative targets approximately 405,000 vulnerable households, offering them a package that includes:

• Weather index insurance, subsidized through a mix of public and donor funding.
  • Water and soil conservation measures, aimed at enhancing climate-resilient agricultural practices.
  • Community-based savings and microcredit schemes, which serve both as financial buffers and platforms for productive investment.

A distinctive feature of R4 is its “insurance-for-assets” model, which allows participants to pay insurance premiums through labor contributions to communal climate-resilient infrastructure projects. This approach simultaneously builds ecological resilience, strengthens social capital, and improves household access to formal risk transfer mechanisms. The impacts of the R4 Senegal program have been notable:

• Households participating in the initiative recovered more quickly from climate shocks;
  • Women’s involvement in savings groups increased financial inclusion and reduced gender- specific vulnerabilities
  • Uptake of insurance and conservation practices improved when bundled with training and peer engagement.

The R4 experience underscores the value of integrated, incentive-based systems that reduce entry barriers for poor households while reinforcing coordination between public and private actors in climate adaptation.

3.  Index-Based Insurance and Bundled Finance for Smallholders

Despite their critical role in ensuring food security, smallholder farmers in West Africa remain largely excluded from formal financial services. Conventional lending institutions often view smallholders as high- risk clients due to the covariate nature of agricultural risks, limited collateral, low asset bases, and irregular cash flows. These challenges are further compounded by increasingly unpredictable climate shocks — droughts, floods, and erratic rainfall — which make traditional credit models unviable and discourage long- term investment in productivity-enhancing technologies.

To address this systemic exclusion, index-based insurance and bundled financial products have emerged as innovative tools to de-risk smallholder agriculture. By aligning the interests of farmers, financial service providers, and public institutions, these mechanisms offer climate-contingent risk transfer, enhance investment incentives, and improve creditworthiness. This section examines key models in this emerging space.

3.1  Forecast-Based and Gender-Responsive Crop Insurance: The GRIN Project

The GRIN (Gender-Responsive Insurance for New Risks) project, piloted by WASCAL (West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use) in partnership with FUTA (Federal University of Technology, Akure), is a leading initiative that exemplifies participatory and climate-informed insurance design.

Focused on northern Ghana and Nigeria, the GRIN project integrates:

• Seasonal climate forecasts to develop ex-ante triggers for insurance payouts;
  • Community-based calibration processes to improve trust, transparency, and relevance of the index;
  • Gender-responsive targeting, ensuring that product design reflects women’s specific exposure and access barriers.

Key features include:

• Low-cost premiums due to group underwriting.
  • Indexes tailored to localized agro-ecological conditions.
  • Embedded climate literacy sessions for improved adoption and understanding.

Preliminary evaluations highlight improved insurance uptake, especially among women, and increased investments in drought-tolerant seeds and soil fertility inputs. The project also demonstrates that co- designing insurance tools with local users enhances trust and ensures alignment with actual risk profiles, addressing a common shortfall in earlier index-based insurance programs.

3.2  Bundled Credit-Insurance Solutions: Risk-Contingent Credit (RCC)

One of the most promising financial instruments for climate resilience is Risk-Contingent Credit (RCC), a product that combines formal loans with built-in insurance coverage. Unlike traditional credit, RCC allows for partial or full debt forgiveness when predefined climate thresholds are breached (e.g., rainfall below minimum viable levels for crop survival).

CGIAR-led pilot programs in Kenya and Ethiopia have demonstrated the effectiveness of RCCs in:

• Incentivizing input use, such as improved seeds, fertilizers, and irrigation equipment.
  • Reducing lender risk, by shifting weather-related default exposure to insurance providers.
  • Expanding financial inclusion, particularly among credit-constrained and risk-averse farmers.

In the RCC model :

• The insurance premium is bundled into the loan product.
  • Farmers receive automatic compensation in the event of adverse weather, which is used to repay or restructure outstanding debt.
  • Digital platforms facilitate rapid claim processing and payout.

These pilots report an average increase of 15–20% in on-farm investments, alongside lower default rates and improved loan performance for financial institutions. Importantly, RCCs also open space for climate- aligned financial innovation, where repayment schedules, loan disbursements, and risk coverage are dynamically linked to climate variables.

3.3  Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs) for Insurance Scale-Up

Scaling climate risk insurance for smallholders requires more than technical innovation, it demands institutional collaboration and public co-investment. East African examples, particularly from Kenya and Uganda, illustrate how Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs) can serve as catalysts for both scale and trust.

These PPPs typically involve:

• Public investment in agro-climatic data infrastructure, farmer outreach, and premium subsidies.
  • Private sector engagement in product design, actuarial modeling, marketing, and claims management.
  • Multilateral support for capacity building and financial risk-sharing mechanisms.

Between 2020 and 2022, Kenya’s PPP model expanded index-based crop and livestock insurance to over

1.8 million farmers, with women accounting for 42% of beneficiaries. In Uganda, over 110,000 rural households accessed insurance products, supported by mobile-based enrollment and decentralized service delivery.

Key enabling factors include:

• Targeted public subsidies to attract private insurers.
  • Mandatory insurance linkage with subsidized agricultural inputs (e.g., fertilizer packages);
  • Transparent governance frameworks to ensure payout credibility and dispute resolution.

These cases highlight that institutional trust and financial alignment are essential for scaling insurance. PPPs can reduce entry barriers, improve delivery efficiency, and leverage complementary capacities from the public and private sectors.

4.  Regional and Global Financial Instruments

While national programs and pilot projects are essential for tailoring solutions to specific country contexts, regional and global financial instruments play a critical role in scaling climate resilience. These instruments offer technical capacity, risk-pooling mechanisms, and concessional financing that most individual West African countries cannot access or afford on their own.

Three key mechanisms — African Risk Capacity (ARC), IFAD’s Enhanced Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Program (ASAP+), and the Green Climate Fund’s (GCF) Inclusive Green Finance model –

demonstrate how pooled capital, parametric insurance, and multilateral finance can be effectively leveraged to support climate-resilient smallholder agriculture across the region.

4.1   African Risk Capacity (ARC): Parametric Sovereign Insurance

The African Risk Capacity (ARC) is a specialized agency of the African Union designed to help member states manage climate-related disasters through sovereign risk insurance. Established in 2014, ARC uses parametric triggers — based on satellite-derived weather data — to activate automatic payouts when extreme weather events (e.g., droughts, floods, cyclones) exceed predefined thresholds.

Key features include:

• Rapid disbursement within days of shock, enabling governments to fund emergency responses or social protection programs.
  • A contingency planning platform, requiring member countries to develop pre-approved operational plans as a condition for coverage.
  • Coverage for over 50 million Africans and total payouts exceeding US $170 million to date.

In West Africa, countries like Senegal, Niger, and Burkina Faso have benefited from ARC payouts to finance early response activities, often in coordination with national safety net programs. For instance, in 2019, Senegal received a payout of approximately US $23 million following a drought, which supported targeted food assistance for over 300,000 people.

ARC’s value lies in:

• Reducing fiscal volatility by avoiding unplanned budget reallocations.
  • Enhancing predictability and speed in emergency response.
  • Promoting pre-disaster planning and inter-ministerial coordination.

However, ARC uptake remains uneven due to affordability constraints, premium financing challenges, and limited national capacity to operationalize contingency plans. Integrating ARC with national CRSP frameworks and leveraging donor co-financing (e.g., GCF or IDA grants) can help overcome these barriers.

4.2  IFAD’s Enhanced Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Program (ASAP+)

Building on the original ASAP initiative, ASAP+ is the International Fund for Agricultural Development’s (IFAD) flagship climate finance mechanism for smallholder adaptation. Launched in 2021, ASAP+ seeks to mobilize US $500 million to support more than 10 million farmers in the world’s most climate-vulnerable regions, including West Africa.

ASAP+ emphasizes:

• Nature-based solutions, such as agroforestry, land restoration, and sustainable irrigation.
  • Digital climate services, providing farmers with early warning, seasonal forecasts, and tailored advice.
  • Blended finance instruments, enabling partnerships with public and private actors to expand access to credit, insurance, and value chains.

The program gives particular priority to Ethiopian and Sahelian contexts, where climate vulnerability intersects with fragile institutions and food insecurity. Projects in Burkina Faso, Niger, and Mali have used ASAP+ financing to:

• Scale farmer field schools focused on climate-smart agriculture (CSA).
  • Strengthen weather-index insurance schemes with real-time data integration.
  • Support women’s cooperatives with access to climate-resilient seed varieties and savings mechanisms.

By targeting the intersection of adaptation, productivity, and equity, ASAP+ offers a replicable model for multi-sectoral, gender-sensitive, and impact-oriented programming.

4.3  GCF-Inclusive Green Finance (Niger): Climate-Resilient Credit Access

In Niger, the Green Climate Fund (GCF) has supported a major initiative under its Inclusive Green Finance (IGF) portfolio, aimed at accelerating access to financial services for smallholders engaged in low-carbon, climate-resilient agriculture.

The project targets 25,000 farmers directly and extends benefits to an estimated 150,000 individuals, focusing on:

• Digital financial inclusion, including mobile banking and digital identity systems.
  • Credit guarantees for microfinance institutions to reduce lending risks.
  • Training and business development services tailored to climate-smart value chains.

The IGF model in Niger illustrates a holistic approach to climate finance, where the financial ecosystem— not just individual farmers—is strengthened through:

• Institutional capacity building (e.g., training loan officers on climate risk evaluation);
  • Market development for green inputs and services.
  • Policy dialogue to align central bank regulations with green finance principles.

The initiative also includes gender quotas and performance-based subsidies to ensure that women- headed households and youth are not excluded from access to climate-aligned credit.

5.  Policy Options

The convergence of climate risks, rural poverty, and financial exclusion in West Africa calls for a new generation of integrated policy instruments. As this article has shown, scattered interventions — be they social transfers, insurance pilots, or microcredit schemes — are insufficient unless embedded within coherent national frameworks and supported by regional and global systems.

This section outlines five interdependent policy options designed to embed climate resilience into national development strategies while promoting equity, financial inclusion, and fiscal sustainability.

5.1     Integrate Climate Resilient Social Protection (CRSP) into National Agricultural Finance

National social protection programs must evolve from purely protective safety nets into adaptive and promotive instruments that address both chronic vulnerability and episodic climate shocks. To achieve this, governments should:

• Expand adaptive social safety nets (e.g. SASPP) to include climate risk financing instruments, such as weather-index insurance or emergency cash transfers triggered by drought indicators.
  • Institutionalize climate early warning systems into the design of cash transfer programs, using real-time rainfall and vegetation indices to enable anticipatory action.
  • Link social protection registries with agricultural extension services, ensuring productive inclusion through access to inputs, training, and markets.
  • Promote shock-responsive digital payment systems for rapid disbursement, especially in fragile zones.

These actions require close collaboration between ministries of finance, agriculture, social protection, and environment, as well as partnerships with meteorological agencies and development partners.

5.2  Promote Bundled Insurance–Credit Products at Scale

Standalone insurance or credit products often fail to reach smallholders due to affordability constraints, low trust, and poor alignment with their realities. Bundled instruments, especially Risk-Contingent Credit (RCC), offer a more effective solution. Key policy levers include:

• Designing gender-sensitive RCC models that address the specific risks and constraints faced by women (e.g., limited land ownership, restricted mobility).
  • Linking loan forgiveness or restructuring to localized weather forecasts and climate thresholds

• Establishing national insurance facilities or guarantee funds to backstop commercial lenders and encourage the roll-out of bundled services.
  • Embedding RCC into agricultural input support programs, so that farmers purchasing subsidized

seeds or fertilizer are automatically enrolled in climate risk protection.

These measures require engagement with central banks, financial regulators, and rural finance providers to develop enabling regulatory frameworks

5.3  Foster Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs) to Build Scale and Trust

Experiences from Kenya and Uganda show that PPPs are essential for scaling insurance and finance solutions. Governments play a critical role in de-risking innovation, funding infrastructure, and creating an enabling environment. Key actions include:

• Subsidizing insurance premiums for poor and vulnerable farmers, especially in pilot phases.
  • Co-investing in climate data infrastructure, such as weather stations, soil maps, and satellite systems.
  • Supporting financial literacy and client outreach, particularly in remote areas where private insurers are unlikely to operate alone.
  • Encouraging product innovation through regulatory sandboxes and digital platforms.

Meanwhile, the private sector should lead on:

• Insurance product design and actuarial pricing.
  • Distribution via cooperatives, agro-dealers, or digital platforms.
  • Claims processing, validation, and grievance redress.

Governments must act as both market builders and honest brokers to ensure PPPs are transparent, inclusive, and accountable.

5.4  Strengthen Regional Risk Pools and Integrate with National Systems

Regional risk pooling through mechanisms such as the African Risk Capacity (ARC) can help countries manage fiscal volatility, respond faster to disasters, and unlock capital for resilience. However, uptake remains modest due to financial and institutional constraints. To improve effectiveness:

• Expand ARC membership and encourage countries to purchase adequate coverage by co- financing premiums with international donors or using IDA climate windows.
  • Integrate ARC disbursement protocols with national CRSP systems (e.g., SASPP) to ensure insurance payouts translate into timely social protection responses.
  • Develop multi-sovereign disaster risk pools, which could improve affordability and increase diversification across climate zones.
  • Promote technical assistance to build actuarial, legal, and operational capacity within national disaster risk units.

These steps can transform ARC from a stand-alone mechanism into a core pillar of climate-resilient public finance.

5.5  Improve Climate Finance Access and Alignment

Governments must adopt a more strategic, system-based approach to climate finance, prioritizing interventions that support smallholder adaptation and resilience. This involves:

• Coordinating across donors (e.g., GCF, ASAP+, African Climate Change Fund) to create country- specific climate finance compacts aligned with national development plans.
  • Prioritizing financial instruments with high leverage and equity, such as blended finance vehicles, concessional lines of credit, and technical assistance grants for rural finance institutions.
  • Strengthening country accreditation capacity to access direct GCF funding and enhance ownership.
  • Creating national climate finance tracking systems, ensuring transparency and accountability in resource allocation.

These reforms will make climate finance more accessible, better targeted, and more impactful at the smallholder level.

6.  Expected Outcomes

The integration of Climate Resilient Social Protection (CRSP) and inclusive smallholder finance is more than a convergence of sectors — it represents a strategic shift toward sustainable rural transformation. When appropriately designed and implemented, the policy options outlined in this article can deliver transformative results across four interconnected dimensions: household resilience, social inclusion, financial efficiency, and food system stability.

6.1  Household Resilience and Risk Management

At the heart of CRSP-finance integration is the goal of enhancing household capacity to absorb and adapt to climate shocks without falling into poverty traps. Empirical evidence from programs like SASPP, R4 Senegal, and RCC pilots suggests that integrated interventions lead to:

• Reduced reliance on distress coping strategies, such as asset liquidation, child labor, or migration.
  • Faster post-shock recovery times, as households can access immediate liquidity via insurance payouts or anticipatory cash transfers.
  • Sustained investment in productive assets, particularly inputs like drought-resistant seeds, improved livestock, or soil conservation technologies.
  • Improved mental well-being, as risk mitigation reduces stress and uncertainty.

These outcomes are particularly significant in fragile areas of the Sahel, where recurrent shocks intersect with chronic poverty. Building financial buffers and shock-responsive safety nets not only reduces vulnerability but lays the foundation for long-term adaptive capacity.

6.2  Inclusion of Women and Marginalized Farmers

Gender dynamics play a decisive role in shaping vulnerability to climate change, with women farmers often excluded from land ownership, financial services, and decision-making. A gender-responsive approach to CRSP and bundled finance can deliver:

• Greater access to credit and insurance for women, especially when paired with training, savings groups, or targeted subsidies
  • Enhanced financial literacy and agency, as demonstrated in the GRIN and R4 projects where women led savings groups and asset planning.
  • Improved intrahousehold welfare outcomes, including higher school attendance for girls and better nutrition.
  • Strengthened collective action, with women’s cooperatives and farmer-based organizations serving as platforms for inclusive service delivery.

These gains are not incidental; they are essential to achieving both social equity and economic efficiency in the context of rural transformation.

6.3  Efficiency and Fiscal Sustainability of Public Interventions

Traditional safety nets and subsidy schemes their high fiscal costs and limited efficiency. In contrast, CRSP systems that leverage data, risk-sharing, and digital infrastructure can deliver greater impact with fewer resources. Integrated programs offer:

• Higher returns on public investment, as bundled insurance-credit solutions reduce reliance on repeated emergency relief.
  • Lower fiscal volatility, with instruments like ARC enabling governments to pre-finance disaster responses without reprogramming national budgets.
  • Delivery efficiencies through digital platforms, including biometric targeting, mobile transfers, and automated payouts linked to early warning systems.

• Increased private sector participation, especially where public co-financing reduces risk exposure for financial institutions.
  • In this way, resilience-building programs can evolve from reactive cost centers into strategic public investments that stabilize rural economies and reduce long-term welfare dependency.

6.4  Improved Food Security and Agricultural Productivity

Climate resilience must ultimately translate into stable and sufficient food systems. By reducing climate- related production losses and enabling increased investment in sustainable practices, integrated CRSP- finance approaches can:

• Increase agricultural productivity, particularly through higher uptake of inputs, improved land management, and diversified cropping systems.
  • Reduce seasonal food insecurity, as evidenced in SASPP and R4 households who were able to maintain food consumption during lean periods.
  • Stabilize local food markets, since fewer farmers exit production aftershocks, maintaining supply and moderating price volatility.
  • Accelerate adoption of climate-smart agriculture, including agroecological practices and water- efficient technologies supported by credit and training.

These results not only benefit individual households, but contribute to national and regional food sovereignty, a crucial objective in light of increasing global supply chain disruptions and geopolitical tensions.

7.  Conclusion

The increasing frequency and severity of climate shocks in West Africa, particularly across the Sahel and savannah zones, are exacerbating chronic vulnerabilities in rural areas, where smallholder farmers form both the backbone of food systems and the frontline of climate exposure. Conventional interventions, whether reactive safety nets, stand-alone microfinance programs, or fragmented donor projects, have proven insufficient to address the complex, systemic, and covariate risks facing this population.

This article has argued that the integration of Climate Resilient Social Protection (CRSP) and inclusive smallholder finance offers a powerful, evidence-based framework for enhancing resilience, promoting socioeconomic equity, and enabling rural transformation in West Africa. Drawing on empirical examples – including the Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program (SASPP), the Green Climate Fund’s R4 Initiative in Senegal, the GRIN and RCC pilots in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia, and regional mechanisms like ARC and ASAP+ – the analysis has shown that multi-level, bundled, and anticipatory approaches are both feasible and impactful.

Key lessons and imperatives include:

• Risk-informed social protection must evolve into a climate-smart delivery system, capable of both protecting the most vulnerable and enabling adaptive livelihoods.
• Bundled financial instruments, particularly those integrating insurance, credit, and extension— are essential to overcome liquidity, trust, and risk constraints in smallholder agriculture.
• Public–private partnerships are not optional—they are critical to achieving both scale and sustainability.
• Regional risk pooling and global climate finance can and must be aligned with national strategies to avoid fragmentation, ensure affordability, and enable long-term planning.
• Gender equity, digital innovation, and climate data systems are not cross-cutting themes— they are foundational enablers of effectiveness and legitimacy.
• Governments in West Africa should ensure that climate financing does not lead to—————————————————————————————– increased

debt burden for their struggling economies.

• Domestic resource mobilization to support national climate strategies and action plans in specific countries.

• Facilitate best practices, knowledge and experience sharing on climate adaptation and mitigation between small holder farmers.
• Advocacy for energy transition policies and reforms to mitigate climate change related disasters.

Looking ahead, national governments and regional bodies such as ECOWAS, WAEMU, and the African Union must take the lead in institutionalizing and scaling integrated CRSP-finance systems. This includes embedding these approaches into national adaptation plans (NAPs), climate-smart agriculture strategies, financial inclusion roadmaps, and public investment frameworks.

Multilateral development banks (MDBs), climate funds (e.g., GCF, AF, ASAP+), and bilateral partners should shift from funding isolated pilots to supporting long-term systems-building with a focus on governance, capacity development, and inclusive digital infrastructure.

The pathway to resilience is neither linear nor immediate. But with the right policy mix, institutional coordination, and sustained investment, West African countries can move from crisis response to structural resilience, ensuring that smallholder families are not merely surviving climate shocks but thriving in spite of them.

References

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Retrieved from https://www.clareprogramme.org

• CGIAR. (2021). Risk-Contingent Credit for Climate-Smart Agriculture: Evidence from Ethiopia and Kenya. CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change.
• Green Climate Fund (GCF). (2021). R4 Rural Resilience Initiative – Senegal Project Summary.

Retrieved from https://www.greenclimate.fund

• IFAD. (2022). Enhanced Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP+): Strategic Brief. Retrieved from https://www.ifad.org
• International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). (2022). Smallholder Finance and Climate Resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa. Retrieved from https://africa.ifpri.info
• SAFIN (Smallholder and Agri-SME Finance and Investment Network). (2023). Scaling PPPs in Agricultural Insurance: Lessons from East Africa. Retrieved from https://www.safinetwork.org
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Retrieved from https://www.worldbank.org

• World Bank. (2022). Food Systems Resilience Program (FSRP) for West Africa. Retrieved from https://www.worldbank.org