Curriculum Agility and the Integration of Climate-Smart Agriculture in Higher Education Institutions in Northern Ghana

Purpose: Agriculture in Northern Ghana faces increasing vulnerability to climate change, requiring higher education institutions (HEIs) to equip graduates with climate-smart agriculture (CSA) competencies. This study examines the curricula of InstituteA and InstituteB to assess their capacity to integrate CSA principles and prepare students for climate-resilient agriculture. Design/Methodology/Approach: Guided by the Context–Input–Process–Product (CIPP) evaluation model and the FAO Climate-Smart Agriculture Sourcebook, data were collected through qualitative curriculum analysis and eight semi-structured interviews with curriculum developers. Findings: CSA integration is fragmented, inconsistently embedded, and largely peripheral in both institutions. While InstituteA’s BSc Agribusiness programme prioritises entrepreneurship and management with only two climate-related electives, InstituteB’s BTech Sustainable Agriculture programme includes indirect references to climate variability but lacks an explicit and coherent climate change framework. Cross-cutting themes such as gender, ICT, indigenous knowledge, and energy conservation are either absent or weakly integrated. Practical Implications: These gaps result in a mismatch between higher education outputs and the competencies required for climate adaptation, highlighting the need for systematic CSA mainstreaming, interdisciplinary curriculum reform, and improved institutional support. Theoretical Implications: The findings contribute to scholarship on curriculum agility by demonstrating how structural and policy constraints limit effective climate change integration in agricultural education within climate-vulnerable contexts. Originality/Value: This study provides empirical evidence from Northern Ghana, offering one of the first structured evaluations of CSA integration in higher agricultural education in the region.