IntroductionClimate change presents one of the greatest challenges to economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) due to the region’s dependency on rain-fed agriculture and low adaptive capacity. While many studies examine barriers and limits to climate change adaptation globally, evidence from SSA remains limited, fragmented, and with no conclusive synthesis of adaptation constraints and opportunities, including how they interact including identification of hotspot countries. This systematic review synthesizes literature on barriers, limits, and enablers of climate change adaptation in SSA’s agricultural sector, identifying spatial and temporal patterns and providing an integrated framework for understanding adaptation dynamics.MethodsWe conducted a systematic literature review following PRISMA guidelines, searching peer-reviewed articles in Scopus, African Journals Online (AJOL), CAB Abstracts, and Google Scholar databases published between 2015 and 2025. After screening 50,549 initial records, 96 studies from empirical studies met the inclusion criteria and were all included for in-depth synthesis. The articles were classified by barrier type, limit category, enabler pathway, and geographic coverage included African countries facing conflicts.ResultsPublication output increased eight times when comparing the 2015 (4 articles) and 2025 (32 articles) yet research remains highly concentrated to just five countries (Ethiopia, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria) accounting for over half (55.2%) of all publications, while 18 SSA countries which include highly vulnerable and conflict-affected nations such as Somalia, Sudan, Central African Republic and Chad have no peer-reviewed studies. Consequently, our findings drawn predominantly drawn from Anglophone Eastern and Southern Africa may not be generalizable to Francophone West Africa, Lusophone countries, or active conflict zones without locally grounded validation. Financial constraints (46.9% of articles), biophysical stressors (39.6%), and institutional barriers (29.2%) emerged as the most dominant adaptation barriers. Conflict and insecurity also emerged as distinct barriers in 18.8% of articles whereas information and technology, gender specific issues and social and human capital barriers were the lowest at 16.7, 10.4 and 8.3%, respectively. Most constraints represented soft limits (75%) and can be reversible through policy, while biophysical thresholds such as persistent water scarcity and ecosystem degradation constitute potential hard limits (25%) requiring transformative adaptation. Enabler categories included indigenous knowledge systems (9%), which were under-represented.ConclusionThe study shows that adaptation in SSA is less constrained by climate awareness deficits but more by geographic concentration of research knowledge, structural poverty, institutional fragmentation, governance capacity gaps, and civil conflicts which systematically exclude most vulnerable populations from evidence generation. Eighteen countries remain entirely unstudied, representing a critical research and policy blind spot. Closing gaps in SSA’s adaptation requires (i) decentralized research investment targeting conflict-affected and under-represented nations such as Francophone, Lusophone, and fragile states; (ii) adaptation interventions that distinguish soft limits which are reversible, from hard biophysical limits that require transformative change; and (iii) integrated, multi-enabler packages that combine financial, institutional, informational, and social capital rather than single-factor interventions.