Livestock underpin livelihoods and food security in Africa, using marginal lands to produce high-quality protein for the household or as a source of income. For mixed farmers, livestock provide draught power, manure for fields, and buffer variations in crop productivity. Livestock also hold cultural significance. However, African livestock farmers are especially vulnerable to climate hazards, and attempt to reduce impacts in different ways, with varied outcomes. A synthesis of the state of knowledge of livestock farmers’ responses to climate variability and change would assist policymakers and practitioners to make informed decisions, and guide researchers towards gaps that need to be filled. To that end, we systematically reviewed articles published between 2014 and 2022—the period between the end of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment and the end of the Sixth, recording study metadata, farmers’ responses, and their drivers, outcomes, barriers and enablers. We included 186 articles from 32 countries (most frequently Kenya or Ethiopia), from which 1089 responses were coded for analysis. Responses by small-scale farmers of cattle, sheep and goats, typically as part of mixed crop-livestock systems, were most common (n = 816), with few documented responses of commercial farmers (121). Most responses pertained to changing herd management (437), followed by feed or pasture management (294). Drought was the most common climate driver of responses (567), while the most commonly mentioned barriers included financial constraints (116), a lack of knowledge or information (98), and government support (67). While there is a sizable body of literature on climate impacts and adaptation of livestock farmers, notable gaps included any work in Central and Northern Africa, and responses of commercial farming systems. In general, future research should focus on these gaps and on improving the depth of information collected, such as on barriers and enablers of adaptation, to better inform future interventions.

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