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With climate extreme events increasing in frequency and intensity in Malawi, the future of local food production faces serious threats, necessitating renewed efforts to build the adaptive capabilities of the majority poor smallholder farmers. In this context, seed security is critical to improving rural livelihoods and agrobiodiversity; however, knowledge of its role in climate change resilience is sparse. Drawing insights from vulnerability and resilience literature, this paper examines the role of seed security in enhancing climate change resilience in northern Malawi. Using a cross-sectional survey of 1,090 smallholder farmers and applying logistic regression analysis, the study found that households that are seed-secure were significantly more likely to report stronger resilience to climate change than those that were not seed-secure, even after controlling for theoretically relevant variables (OR = 1.89; p < .01). Other noteworthy predictors of climate change resilience included level of education, wealth, agroecological practice, and seed sources. Based on the findings, we advocate for promoting seed security as part of broader localized and place-specific action plans to foster resilience to climate change in agricultural regions. 

Due to increasing climate variability and change, the need for more accessible, timely, and reliable climate information has risen, particularly in African rain-fed smallholder farming communities. Yet, studies on the role of information sources in climate resilience are limited. Given the plurality of climate information sources, it is uncertain which medium offers better chances to build resilience against the changing climate. To fill this gap, we employed quantitative survey data from smallholder agricultural households in the Mzimba District in Malawi (n =1090) and the Upper West Region of Ghana (n =1100). Our findings reveal that in Malawi, households whose primary source of climate information was the mass media (OR =2.37; p ≤ 0.001) and external organizations (government, private sector, and nonprofit sector) (OR =2.11; p ≤0.001) were over two times more likely to rate their resilience as good compared to those who relied primarily on self-experience. While in Ghana, interpersonal sources (other farmers, friends/ relatives, special activities by the community) significantly increased a household’s odds (OR = 3.46; p ≤0.001) of reporting good resilience, while external sources reduced farmers’ likelihood of reporting climate resilience (OR =0.06; p ≤0.001) compared to those who relied primarily on self-experience. Farmers in Malawi who practiced intercropping were also more likely to rate their resilience as good than those engaged in monocropping. The findings suggest that the relevance of information sources on climate change resilience is place-specific and that some sources may impede resilience-building if contextual factors are sidelined. This finding reaffirms the need for context-specific policies due to the heterogeneity of agrarian communities across Africa.