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Mahlet Degefu Awoke Successfully Completes PhD on Climate-Smart Agriculture in Tanzania

02.02.2026
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From right to left: Mahlet Awoke (IGZ); her supervisor Professor Katharina Löhr (ZALF/HNEE); Professor Stefan Sieber and Dr Claudia Coral, members of the examination committee (HU). Photo: private.
From right to left: Mahlet Awoke (IGZ); her supervisor Professor Katharina Löhr (ZALF/HNEE); Professor Stefan Sieber and Dr Claudia Coral, members of the examination committee (HU). Photo: private.

Climate change, land degradation, and food insecurity pose major challenges for smallholder farmers in dryland regions of Sub-Saharan Africa. In semi-arid Tanzania, where agriculture is predominantly rain-fed, erratic rainfall and recurrent drought increasingly threaten food production and rural livelihoods. Against this backdrop, Mahlet Degefu Awoke successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, ”Evaluating climate-smart agriculture strategies: adoption, sustainability, and equitable livelihoods in semi-arid Tanzania“ on 17 December 2025 at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Her doctoral research examined how farmers’ sustainability perceptions, adoption decisions, and resource constraints shape the uptake of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) and related livelihood outcomes. Addressing key gaps in the literature, the dissertation links farmers’ perceptions with adoption patterns, practice combinations, and impacts on food security and farm income.

Using household surveys, focus group discussions, and key informant interviews, the study shows that farmers prioritize integrated CSA practices, particularly agroforestry combined with soil and water conservation measures, due to their benefits for soil moisture, yield stability, and drought resilience. Adoption, however, remains constrained by labor shortages, insecure land tenure, limited access to credit and inputs, and weak extension services. The analysis further indicates that female-headed households adopt CSA less frequently, reflecting structural and institutional barriers rather than lower motivation.

The findings demonstrate that higher CSA adoption, especially at greater levels of adoption intensity, is associated with improved dietary diversity, reduced food insecurity, and higher farm income. They further show that CSA policies are most effective when technical support is complemented by inclusive institutional arrangements that reduce access constraints and support climate-resilient rural development.

The doctoral research was conducted at the Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) and supervised by Professor Dr Stefan Sieber, Professor Dr Katharina Löhr, Dr Anthony Kimaro, and Dr Marcos Lana. The work was funded by the ATSAF e.V. Academy, with research collaboration from CIFOR-ICRAF Tanzania.

Since April 2025, Mahlet Degefu Awoke has been working as a postdoctoral researcher at IGZ in the research group “Economic Development and Food Security” led by Professor Dr Tilman Brück. At the IGZ, she contributes to the project “Knowledge Integration for the Leibniz Lab ‘Systemic Sustainability – Biodiversity, Climate, Agriculture and Food within Planetary Boundaries’”. With her expertise in climate-resilient agriculture, rural development, and food security, she strengthens IGZ’s research at the interface of sustainability, food systems, and global change.

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