This paper examines smallholder farmers’ perceptions of climate change, climate variability and their impacts, and adaptation strategies adopted over the past three decades. We use ethnographic analysis, combined with Cumulative Departure Index (CDI), Rainfall Anomaly Index (RAI) analysis, and correlation analysis to compare farmers’ perceptions in Southwestern Nigeria with historical meteorological data, in order to assess the way farmers’ observations mirror the climatic trends. The results show that about 67% of farmers who participated had observed recent changes in climate. Perceptions of rural farmers on climate change and variability are consistent with the climatic trend analysis. RAI and CDI results illustrate that not less than 11 out of 30 years in each study site experienced lower-than-normal rainfall. Climatic trends show fluctuations in both early growing season (EGS) and late growing season (LGS) rainfall and the 5-year moving average suggests a reduction in rainfall over the 30 years. Climatic trends confirmed farmers’ perceptions that EGS and LGS precipitations are oscillating, that rainfall onset is becoming later, and EGS rainfall is reducing. Overall impacts of climate change on both crops and livestock appear to be highly negative, much more on maize (62.8%), yam (52.2%), poultry (67%) and cattle (63.2%). Years of farming experiences and level of income of farmers appear to have a significant relationship with farmers’ choice of adaptation strategies, with r≥0.60@ p<0.05 and r≥0.520@ p<0.05 respectively. The study concluded that farmers’ perceptions of climate change mirror meteorological analysis, though their perceptions were based on local climate parameters. Smallholder farmers are particularly vulnerable to climate change since the majority of them do not have enough resources to cope

This paper examines drought characteristics as an evidence of climate change in two agro-climatic zones of Nigeria and farmers' climate change perceptions of impacts and adaptation strategies. The results show high spatial and temporal rainfall variability for the stations. Consequently, there are several anomalies in rainfall in recent years but much more in the locations around the Guinea savanna. The inter-station and seasonality statistics reveal less variable and wetter early growing seasons and late growing seasons in the Rainforest zone, and more variable and drier growing seasons in other stations. The probability (p) of dry spells exceeding 3, 5 and 10 consecutive days is very high with 0.62≤p≥0.8 in all the stations, though, the p-values for 10day spells drop below 0.6 in Ibadan and Osogbo. The results further show that rainfall is much more reliable from the month of May until July with the coefficient of variance for rainy days 0.30), though CV-RD appears higher in the month of August for all the stations. It is apparent that farmers' perceptions of drought fundamentally mirror climatic patterns from historical weather data. The study concludes that the adaptation facilities and equipment, hybrids of crops and animals are to be provided to farmers, at a subsidized price by the government, for them to cope with the current condition of climate change.

COVID-19 pandemic movement restrictions as part of the control measures put in place by countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has implications on food security, as movement restrictions coincided with planting periods for most of the staple crops. The measures are affecting important staple crops in SSA, and are likely to exacerbate food security challenges in many countries. Achieving adequate food supply in SSA requires developing better policies and packages to confronting the challenge of reducing hunger post COVID-19 pandemic. The lessons learned after COVID-19 crisis will be very important for African countries to rethink their strategies and policies for sustainable economic growth, as COVID-19 many have significant impacts on all sectors of their economies.

The effects of climate change depend on specific local circumstances, posing a challenge for worldwide research to comprehensively encompass the diverse impacts on various local social-ecological systems. Here we use a place-specific but cross-culturally comparable protocol to document climate change indicators and impacts as locally experienced and analyze their distribution. We collected first-hand data in 48 sites inhabited by Indigenous Peoples and local communities and covering all climate zones and nature-dependent livelihoods. We documented 1,661 site-agreed reports of change corresponding to 369 indicators. Reports of change vary according to climate zone and livelihood activity. We provide compelling evidence that climate change impacts on Indigenous Peoples and local communities are ongoing, tangible, widespread, and affect multiple elements of their social-ecological systems. Beyond potentially informing contextualized adaptation plans, our results show that local reports could help identify economic and non-economic loss and damage related to climate change impacts suffered by Indigenous Peoples and local communities.