Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) Training Course

This five-day course equips agriculture, rural development and food security professionals to design, deliver and evaluate climate-smart agriculture interventions. It covers assessing climate risk, selecting and costing appropriate practices, and monitoring resilience outcomes, grounded in the realities of smallholder and mixed farming systems across Africa.

African agriculture is disproportionately exposed to climate variability. Erratic rainfall, longer dry spells and shifting growing seasons are already reducing yields and undermining food security across the continent, and many programmes and policies designed a decade ago no longer match the climate reality farmers are working in.

Climate-smart agriculture is not a single technique but a set of principles for balancing productivity, resilience and mitigation. This course teaches professionals to apply those principles practically, to plan and cost interventions, not just define them, so the resulting programmes actually change outcomes on the ground. The case studies and exercises are drawn from drought-prone drylands, smallholder mixed crop-livestock systems and donor-funded programming environments across Africa, so participants leave able to apply the frameworks directly to their own landscapes and portfolios.

• Explain the three pillars of climate-smart agriculture and how they interact in practice.
• Assess climate risk and vulnerability within a specific farming system or landscape.
• Select and prioritise CSA practices appropriate to local agro-ecological and market conditions.
• Design CSA interventions that balance productivity, resilience and mitigation objectives.
• Integrate climate information services into agricultural planning and advisory work.
• Apply water, soil and input management practices suited to climate-stressed systems.
• Appraise the cost-effectiveness and adoption barriers of CSA practices for smallholders.
• Monitor and evaluate the climate resilience outcomes of an agricultural programme.

This course is designed for:

• Agriculture and rural development programme staff
• M&E officers working on agriculture or food security programmes
• Agricultural extension officers and advisory service managers
• NGO and donor-funded project professionals in food security
• Climate change and environment professionals working on adaptation
• Public sector agriculture and agribusiness policy officers
• Cooperative and farmer organisation managers

The course combines technical grounding with applied planning work, delivered through:

• Facilitator-led sessions on climate-smart agriculture principles and practice
• Case studies drawn from African drylands, mixed farming and pastoral systems
• Climate risk and vulnerability assessment exercises
• Group design of a CSA intervention for a real or simulated landscape
• Practical sessions on climate information and advisory tools
• A costed CSA action plan developed across the week

Organisations that invest in this training can expect:

• More climate-resilient agricultural programming and project design
• Stronger integration of climate risk into planning and budgeting
• Improved targeting of CSA investment to where it has the most effect
• Better use of climate information services in advisory and extension work
• Stronger positioning for climate finance and donor funding applications
• More credible reporting on climate resilience outcomes

Participants who enrol in this training will benefit from:

• A practical framework for designing CSA interventions
• Confidence assessing climate risk and vulnerability in a farming system
• Stronger technical grounding for climate-related project design and proposals
• A ready-to-use CSA action plan
• A stronger professional profile in a growing area of donor and government investment

At Strategic Revenue Africa, our certification goes beyond proof of attendance—it represents practical competence and measurable capability. Upon successful completion of our training programs, participants are awarded a Certificate of Completion from Strategic Revenue Africa, recognizing their ability to apply acquired knowledge in real-world settings. As an organization focused on architecting sustainable revenue and strengthening organizational performance, our certifications signal that participants are equipped with skills that drive results, not just theory.

This is an intermediate course. Participants should have some background in agriculture, rural development, environment or related programme work, though no prior formal training in climate-smart agriculture is required. Participants are encouraged to bring details of a real farming system, landscape or programme to work with during the practical sessions.