Highlights:

Agroecology is still a marginal approach to agricultural development in Africa when compared to industrial approaches, despite growing evidence of its potential to address core challenges of food insecurity, poverty, and soil degradation. This paper investigates one possible explanation for this discrepancy: the discursive landscape of African agriculture. Taking inspiration from narrative analysis, we document stories about agroecology as told by key actors in the food system: farmers, pastoralists, NGO workers, extension officers, government officials, and researchers. Based on 208 interviews with key informants (KIs) across nine African case studies, we identified three distinct narratives: Agroecology is: 1) a tool in a toolbox 2) for poor farmers 3) the better path. In addition to these narratives, we report KIs' perceptions of two narrative components, namely their definition of agroecology and the key challenges affecting agriculture in their case study site. We use these problem framings to evaluate how logically agroecology fits as a solution in this story, and thus its discursive potential as an approach to agricultural development. We find that many respondents do not consider agroecology to be an effective or relevant solution to major food system challenges, or that they have a limited understanding of the full breadth of agroecology. We suggest that organizations seeking to promote agroecology guide their efforts according to a key agroecological principle, knowledge co-creation, to better understand farmers’ views and experiences with specific agroecological practices in the African context.

This study identified narratives of agroecology that cut across differences between stakeholders and geographies in African agriculture. Within two of these narratives, agroecology was understood to be an agricultural approach with the potential to address food system challenges. The most common narrative, however, told a pessimistic story about agroecology's potential, as an alternative to industrial intensification, to contribute meaningfully to agricultural development. The responses suggest that many had a limited understanding of the full breadth of agroecology (and evidence of its potential) and consequently did not consider agroecology to be an effective or relevant solution to major food system challenges. Respondents generally did not acknowledge agroecology's ability to increase farmer autonomy from external economic pressures, and, relatedly, respondents generally did not see agroecological practices as viable alternatives to increased fertilizer and pesticide application. The dominance of these narratives may present a challenge to agroecological transitions in African contexts.