Abstract Efforts to modernise agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa have increasingly relied on collaborative arrangements between public institutions and private actors. Yet evidence on how these agricultural public–private partnerships (PPPs) affect smallholder farmers’ ability to cope with climate risks remains limited. Using the case of the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania’s agricultural strategic partnerships, this article examines the implications of partnership interventions for enhancing smallholders’ absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacities for climate resilience. Based on in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with partnership actors, the study shows that interventions are centred on the production and marketing nodes of the value chains. The partnerships contributed moderately to farmers’ absorptive capacity, but adaptive gains remained weak due to intermittent seed supply systems, unaffordable input prices, unstable markets, and a lack of irrigation infrastructure and technologies. Moreover, partnerships’ potential to enhance transformative capacity remains questionable, as they often fall short of tackling structural constraints.
Keywords agricultural strategic partnership, agricultural value chain, climate resilience, smallholder farmers, innovative systems, SAGCOT.
Efforts to modernise agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa have increasingly relied on collaborative arrangements between public institutions and private actors. These partnerships are commonly presented as a means of accelerating technological diffusion, strengthening the agricultural value chain, integrating smallholder farmers into commercial markets, and promoting climate-smart farming. In policy narratives, they are often associated with inclusive development and improved livelihoods (Moreddu 2016). However, research on these initiatives reveals a more complex picture. Some interventions have contributed to increased productivity (Hoang 2021; Aseete et al. 2023) and improved access to inputs, irrigation technologies, and markets (Aseete et al. 2023; Beekmans, Dallinger and Molenaar 2014; Nakazi, Mwesigye and Barungi 2019), while others have produced uneven outcomes, particularly for farmers with limited resources (Fairtrade Foundation 2014; Senyolo, Long and Omta 2021; Kahamba and Xu 2025).
Moreover, while many contemporary agricultural public–private partnerships (PPPs) are framed as innovative, they may often reproduce Green Revolution-style production-led logics under new institutional arrangements that continue to sideline structural vulnerabilities (Griffin 1979; Little and Watts 1994; Paul and Steinbrecher 2013). These include externally designed technologies that do not reflect local conditions, limited farmer input, weak producer groups, and neglect of market structures and bargaining power (Oya 2012; Poulton, Dorward and Kydd 2010; Scoones 2009).
These tensions are salient in the context of climate change. Yet despite extensive work on productivity and market outcomes, there remains a paucity of studies that explicitly evaluate the impact of PPPs on climate adaptation, especially on how PPPs affect smallholder farmers’ climate-risk coping. While Kahamba and Xu (2025) consider the role of these PPPs in strengthening farmer capabilities, the earlier analysis is not linked to climate resilience. The limited evidence on adaptation suggests that while PPPs may facilitate access to certain adaptation-related resources, their market-led mechanisms often fail to deliver meaningful transformative benefits to smallholders (Omweri and Juma 2025; Gannon et al. 2021; Pratiwi, Lee and Suzuki 2021; Zoetbrood 2022).
This study examines this relationship through the case of the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT), a large-scale initiative designed to stimulate agricultural investment and link smallholders to commercial value chains through the Large-Scale Nucleus-Outgrowers Model, the ‘Potential’ Partner and ‘Emergent’ Farmer Model, and strategic partnerships (SAGCOT 2011; Pauline, Mbande and Börjeson 2023). Agriculture is the backbone of Tanzania’s economy, employing approximately 65 per cent of its population and contributing about 29 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and 30 per cent of export earnings (World Bank 2020). However, climate change poses significant challenges for Tanzania’s sector, affecting crop yields, food security, and rural livelihoods (Gwambene, Liwenga and Mung’ong’o 2019; Ojija et al. 2017; Myeya 2021). Unlike other models, the strategic partnerships were intentionally designed to empower smallholder farmers along the value chains of ‘strategic’ crops and to support decisionmaking, ensuring that partnership interventions address farmers’ challenges within those value chains. In the SAGCOT context, strategic crops include tomatoes, potatoes, and soybeans, which SAGCOT identified in 2015 (Africa Kilimo 2016).
Moreover, SAGCOT’s 2011 Blueprint highlights climate change, conservation, and resource management as key to long-term growth. Also, its Agricultural Green Growth (AGG) promotes sustainable, equitable development (Scherr et al. 2013). SAGCOT links green growth to economic progress, environmental sustainability, and social inclusion via commercial agriculture (SAGCOT 2024a, 2024b). Thus, while SAGCOT was not originally designed as a climate change-specific initiative, these links imply that climate change should be integrated into partnership efforts.
Even so, although the SAGCOT PPP is framed as an innovative, inclusive, and green-growth-oriented partnership, its intervention logic closely mirrors earlier Green Revolution-style rural development paradigms (Griffin 1979). Like production-led models, it emphasises improved seed varieties, external input packages, and private-sector commercialisation (ibid.; Dorward et al. 2004). Focusing on soybean and potato partnerships, this article therefore qualitatively assesses SAGCOT as a policy and institutional intervention with climate-relevant implications by examining the extent to which its design and implementation of strategic partnerships contribute to or fall short of enhancing adaptive capacity and climate resilience. Using SAGCOT as a case study, the article asks to what extent can Green Revolution-style, production-led agricultural PPPs build absorptive, adaptive, and transformative climate resilience among smallholder farmers.
The analysis shows that while partnerships have improved farmers’ immediate knowledge and short-term coping capacity, partnerships’ ability to build adaptive and transformative capacities for climate resilience remains uncertain due to their neglect of systemic challenges, such as market governance, strengthening farmer associations, and long-term institutional arrangements. As a result, gains remain incremental, and the capacity for long-term adaptation and transformation is limited, calling into question the ability of production-oriented agricultural PPPs to deliver lasting climate resilience for smallholder farmers.
The rest of the article is organised as follows. Section 2 presents the theoretical framework: it conceptualises innovation systems and climate resilience and explains how they are operationalised in this study. Section 3 outlines study methods. Section 4 presents the findings and discussion. Section 5 concludes and highlights the contributions of this research.
This article combines innovation systems and climate resilience to analyse how agricultural PPPs influence farmers’ capacity to adapt to climate change. Climate resilience is defined as a system’s ability to absorb changes and persist (Holling 1973; IPCC 2012). It involves shock absorption, adaptation, buffering, and recovery or transformation (Holling et al. 1995; Berkes, Colding and Folke 2003; IPCC 2012). Resilience can be compromised by high variability in markets or environmental systems, and it relies on ecosystem diversity and social rules (Adger 2000).
Within a climate adaptation context, climate resilience is commonly understood as the capacity of agricultural households and systems to respond effectively to climatic stress and long-term environmental change (Folke 2006). Capacity is conceptualised as a multidimensional framework comprising three interdependent capacities: absorptive, adaptive, and transformative (Bahadur, Ibrahim and Tanner 2013; Béné et al. 2012). Absorptive capacity is the ability to withstand and absorb climate shocks using existing resources, knowledge, and coping mechanisms (Béné et al. 2012). In agriculture, this includes drought-tolerant seeds and soil conservation measures.
Adaptive capacity is the ability of a system to adjust to climate change to moderate potential damage, take advantage of opportunities, and cope with consequences (IPCC 2001) and allocate resources to moderate potential future damage (Smit and Wandel 2006). In farming systems, these include adopting climate-smart agriculture techniques, crop or income diversification, better access to climate information and extension services, and advancing farming technologies. Transformative capacity is the ‘ability to create a new system when ecological, economic, or social structures make the existing system untenable’ (Walker et al. 2004: 5). Drawing on O’Brien’s (2012) idea of deliberate transformation, agriculture’s transformative capacity should involve fundamental changes in production and food systems, such as restructuring value chains, reforming institutions, and changing market structures and infrastructure to support smallholders.
To understand how these processes unfold, the study also draws on the concept of agricultural innovation systems in which an innovation system is understood as a network of agents, interactions, and institutions that influence behaviour related to the generation, diffusion, and use of knowledge or technology (Spielman 2005). From this perspective, agricultural change is shaped by interactions among farmers, firms, government agencies, and other organisations. These interactions influence not only how knowledge circulates and how technologies are adopted but also how constraints are addressed. Partnerships are often expected to strengthen these innovation systems by fostering collaboration and aligning incentives across actors (Sumberg 2005; Lundvall et al. 2002). However, their effectiveness depends on how they are structured, whose interests are prioritised, and whether they address the broader conditions that shape farmers’ decisions.
The article examines capacities that help farmers cope with climate change, assuming that PPP enhances absorptive capacity via access to improved seeds and risk tools, boosts adaptive capacity through learning, extension, and climatesmart practices, and supports transformative capacity by restructuring value chains, attracting investments, and establishing new rules and standards. Adaptive and transformative resilience is seen as both technical capacities and outcomes influenced by farmers’ agency, collective organisation, and their ability to impact markets and institutions.
The study was conducted in the Njombe and Iringa regions within SAGCOT’s Ihemi cluster. This area was selected due to its early involvement in partnership activities and its diversity of agricultural practices. A qualitative approach was used to capture the experiences and perspectives of key actors and smallholder farmers involved in soybean and potato value chains, including members of farmer groups and cooperatives benefiting from strategic partnerships. The study focused on these partnerships because potatoes suit the Ihemi cluster, boosting food and economic security, while soybeans are a new, increasingly demanded cash crop. Participants were selected purposively to reflect the diversity of actors involved in the partnerships, including state actors, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), companies, and smallholder farmers, as elaborated in a paper by Kahamba and Xu (2025).
The primary data was collected between 2020 and mid-2021 through a range of interviews on the strategic partnerships and benefits for smallholder producers. This consisted of the following:
Data collection continued until recurring themes became evident and no substantial new insights emerged (Trotter 2012). Secondary materials, including policy documents and key partnership documents, were used to complement and contextualise the primary data.
Data was analysed and interpreted using thematic analysis. The transcripts were systematically coded to find similarities and patterns in participants’ responses. The analytical themes centred on the types of interventions, innovations introduced by the partnerships, and different climate resilience capacities they influenced among farmers. These potential themes were reviewed and refined in light of the research question. The results are presented in narrative form, with quotes to illustrate the findings. Primary data was triangulated with secondary data, including newsletters from stakeholder forums and SAGCOT strategic documents, and success stories documented by SAGCOT to compare stated partnership objectives with observed practices.
4.1 Actors within strategic partnerships and their interventions
The two strategic partnerships launched in 2015 in the Ihemi cluster served as early models for other clusters. The soybean partnership involved Silverlands Ltd, the primary driver to ensure market demand. Based in Ihemi Village, Iringa, Silverlands makes chicken feed from soybean cake and was expected to ensure a stable market across Iringa, Njombe, and Songea. Interviews revealed a network of actors, including private firms (Alfa Agrovet and International Tanfeeds Ltd) that provided soybean markets, and NGO partners such as CARE International, CARITAS, the CDI, and BRiTEN, who mobilised farmers, built capacity, and mediated with private firms and smallholders. In Njombe, CARITAS worked with NADO to mobilise and train farmers.
The potato partnership sought to introduce high-quality seeds, continue to improve productivity, and support market expansion. From 2015 to 2017, Mtanga Foods, using TARI-Uyole seeds, was the main seed multiplier, with Yara and Syngenta providing fertilisers and pesticides. Kilimo Trust trained farmers in good practices and market access. After Mtanga’s exit in 2017, in 2018, Tanzanice and Silverlands joined TARI-Uyole and foreign companies under Stawisha to develop seed varieties. Now the main actors are Silverlands, Tanzanice, Yara, Syngenta, and NADO.
Interviews with SCL participants showed that since 2020, the two partnerships have operated largely independently. Contrary to expectations of mature relationships, there were few interactions among farmers, firms, and NGOs (see Kahamba and Xu 2025). Actors worked independently, leaving farmers without guaranteed markets and revealing critiques that agricultural PPPs often favour private interests. The next section discusses interventions and innovations introduced by the partnerships.
4.1.1 Introduction of improved potato and soybean seed varieties
Interventions in potato and soybean value chains aimed to improve access to high-quality seeds to boost farmers’ production. Before the potato partnership, farmers mainly used local varieties such as CIP, which yielded poorly. Private companies introduced potato seed varieties, including locally produced varieties and high-quality imported seeds (ibid.).
Some imported varieties, such as Sagitta, gained local acceptance and were registered by TOSCI, signalling progress in potato technology. Farmers favoured Sagitta for its shape, smoothness, easy peeling, yellow interior, and long shelf life, which is due to its low water content. However, their adoption was mainly driven by yield under controlled conditions, ignoring local variability and farmers’ management capacity. These new varieties were more disease-prone, especially to blight, requiring costly, repeated pesticide use, and had limited climatic suitability. As the leader of a farmer group in Lusitu Village in Njombe region pointed out, ‘These varieties were good, but the major challenge was that they were easily attacked by blight. For example, Sagitta was imported from the Netherlands, a country with cold weather, unlike our climate here.’
Sagitta provided high yields but was riskier and relied on pesticides and fertilisers, reducing farmers’ absorptive capacity. Only a few in Isowelu Ward who could afford pesticides chose to produce it. As Isowelu AMCOS member with experience in producing Sagitta said, ‘When you delay to spray, you cannot get Sagitta; it requires good timing.’ Thus, the new seed varieties raised farmers’ climate and disease risks because they were sensitive to blight, relied on timely pesticides, and adapted poorly to local weather.
Figure 1 Potato quality declared seed (QDS) storage facility in Lusitu Village
Photo: J. Kahamba, Sokoine University of Agriculture.
Another intervention involved establishing farmer-led production of quality declared seed (QDS) to improve local seed availability and sustain seed systems. SCL identified eight farmers, including women and men, capable of managing or renting ten-acre farms. Trained by TARI-Uyole and TOSCI, they received agro-inputs and built storage. The QDS farmers were required to sell potato seeds to smallholders at Tsh 800/kg, but production declined in the first year due to low demand, capital shortages, and plant diseases such as blight and fungal diseases. Consequently, QDS production did not meet expectations. Overall, the potato seed intervention focused more on productivity than resilience.
Regarding soybean seeds, before the partnership, few farmers in Iringa and Njombe produced soybeans as it was a new, poorly established crop in the region. In collaboration with TARI-Uyole, the CDI brought soybean seed varieties – Soya#2 and Soya#4 – which were readily adopted by farmers.
4.1.2 Capacity building and provision of extension services
Capacity building in strategic partnerships enhanced farmers’ knowledge and skills when facing climate variability. Demonstration plots and extensive training in good agricultural practices (GAPs) – such as disease identification, pesticide use, seed selection, and planting techniques – were conducted. Extension agents framed these practices as risk management and adaptive strategies against crop diseases and unpredictable rainfall. As a female QDS farmer explained,
In the past, we used to buy just pesticides; we didn’t know how to use them or when. We used to apply pesticides when potato farms had already been infected, which was challenging. But after we got the training, I have to do the inspection regularly. If they are not infected, I apply pesticides for prevention, and if they are infected already, I apply other pesticides.
Figure 2 Potato quality declared seed (QDS) ready for planting
Photo: J. Kahamba, Sokoine University of Agriculture.
An emphasis on preventative crop management aimed to boost farm resilience. Some farmers received training on commercial farming and market identification, learning record-keeping, cost calculation, and profit-making in potato production.
In the soybean strategic partnership, besides capacity-building training, some NGOs, such as CARITAS, provided extension services through their individual projects to supplement government services.
4.1.3 Linking farmers with input suppliers and potato and soybean buyers
SCL attempted to connect farmers with suppliers of fertilisers and pesticides, as well as buyers of potatoes and soybeans. Potato buyers were in other regions, including Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar. The SCL key informant explained:
Securing markets for our farmers is a priority because if we improve their productivity without addressing market constraints, they cannot fully benefit from our interventions. Therefore, after the introduction of improved potato varieties, we had to try to look for potato buyers in Dar es Salaam and link them to the farmers.
(Key informant, 2020)
Despite these connections, most farmers, especially poor women and men, could not afford trucks to transport crops to distant markets, leaving only a few who could do so individually. This was due to a lack of systems for collective selling to buyers. One FGD participant said:
If we had a buyer/company that could buy potatoes in bulk, we would like to have a system to sell our potatoes together. But now we get buyers who want 20 bags or 100 bags, which can be produced by a few farmers.
(Male FGD participant, 2020)
Ultimately, most farmers sold raw potatoes through middlemen at lumbesa size (potato bags with extra weight), indicating that higher-value systems such as processing and structured marketing remained unaddressed. This confirms that market structures must develop alongside productivity (Marion et al. 2024; da Silva and Rankin 2013).
4.2 Implications of interventions on smallholders’ climate resilience
Although climate change was not an explicit objective of the SAGCOT strategic partnerships, this section explains the implications of the partnership interventions for farmers’ absorptive, adaptive, and transformative climate-resilience capacities. Using climate resilience as an evaluative lens, the analysis specifically examines how productivity-oriented partnership interventions translated into farmers’ ability to cope with, adapt to, and transform in the face of climatic and marketrelated stresses.
The partnerships notably improved farmers’ skills and knowledge of GAPs, enabling them to identify diseases, apply pesticides properly, use correct seed spacing, and determine optimal planting and harvesting times. In the potato value chain, some farmers reported yield increases of 50–80 bags per acre for initial varieties and up to 150 bags for high-quality imported ones after adopting GAPs. Farmers also learned to evaluate pesticide quality and prevent crop infections, thereby reducing losses from diseases such as blight. These changes likely enhanced farmers’ capacity to prevent crop losses, address field challenges, and maintain production amid common stressors.
However, consistent with critiques of Green Revolution-style production-focused interventions (Kerr 2012; Pingali 2012; Leach, Scoones and Stirling 2010), these positive developments translated into fragile and unsustainable absorptive resilience. Mostly women and poor men, unable to transport potatoes, relied on middlemen. Farmers faced squeezed profits due to high input costs and volatile prices. QDS producers lacked reliable markets, funds, and consistent seed supplies, causing many to quit seed production after a year. This undermined the benefits of training and improved seed systems. While SAGCOT partnerships improved basic knowledge, they failed to build the institutional, financial, or technological foundations for resilience. Farmers remained vulnerable due to structural weaknesses in input access, technology, and support – issues that are not just service gaps but deep constraints. The company-led models, with limited farmer ownership and weak consultation, could not address these. This aligns with Zoetbrood’s (2022) critique that many PPPs in the global South prioritise private-sector incentives over farmers’ needs and systemic vulnerabilities.
The findings show that market uncertainties, poor supply of improved seeds, and disease susceptibility of new varieties hampered the shift from knowledge to sustained adaptation. Many farmers reverted to older potato varieties such as CIP due to market rejection of the Meru and Asante varieties introduced earlier. As an old woman reported during the FGD in Lusitu Village, ‘We continue producing CIP because we know even if middlemen do not buy, we will still consume them.’ Also, the newly introduced high-quality potato varieties were not preferred by most farmers because they were highly susceptible to mnyauko (wilt disease) and ukungu (blight disease). As one male FGD participant in Nganda Village pointed out,
Those who bring new potato varieties should consult farmers to learn about the challenges they face and what they want. Most farmers now grow avocados on their farms. Even I, I used to produce potatoes in more than four acres, but after the problem of ukungu, since 2018, I had to reduce to one acre and used the remaining three acres for avocado production.
(Male FGD participant, 2020)
Additionally, the new potato seed varieties needed costly fertilisers and pesticides from Yara and Syngenta, which many farmers could not afford. This demonstrates that farmers actively adopt technologies, assess risks, and adapt strategies.
Similarly, soybean farmers, despite adopting GAPs, struggled to maintain production due to poor seed quality, high labour costs, and unreliable buyers. They lacked the confidence to expand because the partnership failed to ensure stable markets or value-chain linkages. Its inability to address market risks and input costs weakened adaptive capacity. A key barrier was farmers’ reliance on manual labour and lack of investment in irrigation and machinery. This production-focused approach shows a limited response to farmers’ adaptation needs.
This, in turn, confined production to small plots, reflecting broader patterns observed in similar agricultural interventions (Grabowski et al. 2016; Haggblade and Tembo 2003) and limited farmers’ ability to adjust to labour shortages, rainfall variability, and increasing production demand: ‘We cannot do irrigation as there is no infrastructure in place,’ said a male FGD participant in Isowelu Ward.
These findings show that while farmers acquired new skills, they could not sustain or expand production, suggesting that partnership effectiveness depends more on intervention adapting with farmers’ strategies than on technological transfer. Pratiwi et al. (2021) note that private-led partnerships in Indonesia initially succeed but struggle to adapt in the long term due to power imbalances, market failures, and financial risks. Coffee farmers adopt improved practices but are constrained by market volatility and bargaining power, much like reliance on exploitative middlemen and unreliable markets in SAGCOT’s partnerships. These partnerships failed to establish sustainable mechanisms for market access, technology adoption, and farmer decisionmaking, prioritising economic gains over local empowerment (Omweri and Juma 2025; Gannon et al. 2021).
Lastly, findings show that partnerships did not enhance transformative capacity in farming practices, market structures, power imbalances, farmers’ institutions, and financial access. Smallholders’ rain-fed production continued on small plots with limited access to better seeds and inputs. The partnerships’ focus on short-term activities and avoidance of capital-heavy investments prevented shifts to irrigation, new technologies, and market reforms. It also failed to challenge middlemen, who control potato markets. Despite farmers transporting potatoes to Dar es Salaam, middlemen still dictated prices and sales, maintaining market exploitation. One young woman shared her experience:
I was able to take potatoes to Mabibo Market Dar es Salaam… The challenge I experienced is that I was supposed to hand the truck to dalali [middlemen]… Sometimes, you can sell the potatoes at a lower price than what is trending in the village. This is because, as the potatoes spend days, the price drops.
(Female FGD participant in Lusitu Village, 2020)
This reduced confidence in the production of this strategic crop. One old female FGD participant in Lusitu Village lamented:
Ah! Nowadays, we no longer make a profit from potatoes. The middlemen are everywhere. For most of us who cannot transport our potatoes to Dar es Salaam, we sell them at very low prices. Some farmers have decided to turn their potato farms into avocado farms… they believe avocado has a good market.
The excerpts above indicate that without a transformation in market structure, farmers remain trapped in unequal economic relationships that hinder long-term resilience and profitability.
Transformative capacity also requires financial stability and reduced risk exposure. However, farmers, especially women, lacked access to microcredit, and some male borrowers struggled to repay loans due to market losses. While mechanisms such as index-based agricultural insurance (Carter et al. 2017) or weather insurance (Dercon et al. 2014) could have mitigated risks, the partnership did not use them, highlighting limited financial integration and no risk sharing among farmers, financial institutions, and private entities. Some FGD participants shared their diverse experiences:
After getting potato production inputs through loans, we produced a lot, but they did not make a profit after selling because the price was very low. We could not repay the loan using the revenue, we had to find another alternative.
(Male FGD participant in Lusitu Village, 2020)
I took TSh 800,000 for fertiliser and irrigation pump from NJOCOBA [the Njombe Community Bank] but when I harvested and sold, I got TSh 360,000, then my friends and I decided to go to the forest to make charcoal so that we could repay the loan.
(Young male FGD participant in Lusitu Village, 2020)
The excerpts reveal that the partnerships focused on a few strategic crops, highlighting a common challenge: crop-specific intensification without diversification or market expansion. This made farmers vulnerable to market saturation and price drops, worsened by weak storage, processing, and marketing institutions (Jayne, Mather and Mghenyi 2010). Charcoal production acted as a safety net for short-term financial shocks, especially among the young, but it was not an adaptive or transformative livelihood strategy; rather, it resulted from market failure.
Figure 3 The unfinished packhouse in Lusitu Village
Photo: J. Kahamba, Sokoine University of Agriculture.
Nevertheless, the partnerships did not strengthen farmers’ associations or cooperatives, thereby weakening their influence. This was not due to an undervaluation of their importance, but rather to the partnerships favouring quick firm-to-farmer engagement over long-term organisational development. Consequently, weak farmer groups hampered collective input procurement, value addition, and price negotiations. The unfinished packhouse in Lusitu Village (see Figure 3) exemplifies this, as it was started but abandoned when external aid ceased in the absence of local capacity to sustain it.
Overall, most farmers remain in low-value, rain-fed systems that rely on manual labour and middlemen, and lack market centres, storage, and bargaining power. This shows that partnerships have not boosted climate resilience in SAGCOT’s Ihemi cluster. The failure to strengthen farmer groups reveals a flaw in PPP models that underinvest in collective institutions vital for market coordination, bargaining, and resilience (Bernard and Spielman 2009; Markelova et al. 2009). This contrasts with evidence from Southeast Asia and East Africa, which shows that when partnerships invest more in institutional development, state support, market coordination, and collective action, they achieve better adaptive outcomes for smallholders (Gannon et al. 2021; Pratiwi et al. 2021; Nguyen, Dzator and Nadolny 2015; Kilelu, Klerkx and Leeuwis 2017). The SAGCOT experience reflects not a lack of partnership potential but the persistence of a production-led development approach within a new institutional framework.
This study assessed whether SAGCOT’s partnerships improved smallholder farmers’ climate resilience via innovations in soybean and potato value chains. Results indicated limited, short-term gains primarily through training, better agronomic practices, and access to improved seeds. However, these benefits were fragile and unevenly shared, leaving women and youth vulnerable. The SAGCOT case suggests that production-focused agricultural PPPs struggle to provide lasting climate resilience if resilience relies mainly on technological adoption governance. It shifts debates on agricultural PPPs from technological delivery to design, governance, and transformation.
Collectively, the findings suggest redesigning agricultural PPPs as resilience-focused, farmer-led efforts rather than deploying preset technologies. These partnerships should involve smallholders co-designing solutions, supported by strong producer groups for collective bargaining and risk sharing. They should prioritise investments in market institutions and value addition, since production alone can increase vulnerability without market governance. Flexibility and adaptation are essential to respond to climatic and market changes. They must also address power, equity, and risk, especially for women and youth.
Table 1 summarises an illustrative implementation roadmap that translates the study’s findings into design considerations for resilience-oriented agricultural strategic partnerships, highlighting key actors, instruments, sequencing, and including safeguards.
This roadmap can be structured around three recommended policy actions:
1 This issue of the IDS Bulletin was supported by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. The opinions expressed are the authors’ own and do not reflect the views of the funder.
2 Judith Samwel Kahamba, postdoctoral researcher, University of Jyväskylä, Finland and Lecturer, Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania.
3 Xiuli Xu, Professor, College of International Development and Global Agriculture, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China.
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© 2026 The Authors. IDS Bulletin © Institute of Development Studies | DOI: 10.19088/1968-2026.173
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The IDS Bulletin is published by Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Brighton, BN1 9RE, UK. This article is part of IDS Bulletin Vol. 57 No. 2 July 2026 ‘Climate Resilience and Poverty Reduction’.