In the light of expected future population growth and the growing scarcity of arable land due to climate change and variability, increasing pressure on African food systems is to be expected and the herewith the necessity to provide more food on less land. For most of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa this implies a huge task. This paper introduced agroforestry as a promising adaptation strategy for subsistence farmers. By various cost-effective methods of planting trees, smallholder farmers can increase the resilience of their food crops, whilst simultaneously generate additional income from the sale of firewood and other products and contribute to CO2 emission mitigation through carbon sequestration. However, despite this synergy between increasing food security and climate change mitigation, the adoption rate of agroforestry in sub-Saharan Africa is still unsatisfactory.
It is therefore important to provide a better understanding on the barriers and reasons that hinder smallholder farmers to adopt agroforestry methods on their cultivated lands. This paper reviewed the approaches taken by different recent studies on the evaluation of intrinsic and extrinsic factors that influence farmers’ attitudes, knowledge and perception and thus their decision-making process. We proposed a first approach for quantifying extrinsic factors based on approximate indicators that can be evaluated using publicly available statistical data. Thereby we were able to identify a set of countries with a large adoption potential for agroforestry and a low potential, respectively. We hope to having achieved a contribution towards a comprehensive understanding of agroforestry as an effective risk management and adaptation technology that is tailored to local and regional needs and circumstances. Yet, in order to really improve human security and livelihoods of the people, it also requires policy-makers to “Governing a transition towards an effective climate response and sustainable development pathway is a challenge involving rethinking our relation to nature.”, said Pachauri, who is chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change \citep{gulftimes}.