Sustainable Soil Management within Net-Zero Pathways in African Agriculture: A Systematic Review of Evidence, Framing and Adoption Conditions

Agricultural sustainability has become a major policy and research priority in Africa, given the combined pressures of climate change, land degradation and persistent food insecurity. Within this context, growing attention has turned to whether climate-resilient soil management practices can support low-emission agricultural transitions while improving livelihood outcomes for smallholder farmers. To assess this potential, this paper used systematic review procedures to synthesise evidence from 82 Africa-specific empirical, review and institutional sources published between 2000 and March 2026; 15 additional global or methodological sources informed contextual framing but were excluded from systematic counts. Evidence was organised around climate relevance, soil-health outcomes, adoption and implementation conditions, and equity-related trade-offs and sources directly measured or modelled greenhouse-gas emissions, soil-carbon change or net-zero outcomes. Findings show that soil management is rarely promoted primarily for climate mitigation. Instead, it is linked to productivity, fertility recovery, erosion control, resilience and food security. Farmers’ adoption and sustained use of soil management practices is shaped by land tenure, labour availability, credit, extension, input access, local institutions and farmers’ expectations of short-term and long-term benefits. The evidence also shows important equity and trade-off issues. Women, youth, tenants and poorer households may face barriers to participation, while crop residues, manure, land and labour have competing uses.. The review concludes that soil-based net zero pathways are most credible when climate goals are integrated with locally relevant productivity, livelihood and soil health priorities. Policies should focus on effectively integrating tenure security, transition support, farmer-centred advisory systems and proportionate monitoring approaches to advancing net zero pathways through soil management.