Ask a farmer in the Upper West Region what climate change looks like and the answer is rarely about global temperatures. It is about rains that arrive late, stop early or fall all at once. It is about planting twice in one season because the first seeds died in a dry spell.

The data tells the same story. The World Bank's 2024 climate vulnerability profile for Ghana projects that average annual temperatures will rise by 1.2 to 1.5°C over the next two decades compared with a decade ago. The north is where temperatures are expected to increase the most, and it is also where people are most likely to be poor, which limits their ability to cope and adapt. By the middle of the century, every region is projected to see at least 50 more days a year of heat that calls for "extreme caution", rising to more than 100 extra days in Greater Accra and Volta.

Ghana is one case, but the question it raises applies across the continent: who gets to decide how communities adapt?

Farming remains the main livelihood for a large share of Ghanaian households. Agriculture employed around 4.8 million people in 2024, about a third of the labour force, and more than half of all households were engaged in farming at the time of the last agricultural census. Most of that farming depends on rain. When the rain changes, household income, food and school fees change with it.

In our work with communities, the needs we hear are practical and specific.

Information they can use. Seasonal forecasts exist, but they rarely reach farmers in a form or language they can act on. A forecast helps only if it arrives before planting decisions are made, through a channel people trust, such as local radio, an extension officer or a community meeting.

Water they can count on. Small investments such as rainwater harvesting, shallow wells and community dams often do more for resilience than large projects that take years to build.

Seeds and practices suited to a changing climate. Varieties that tolerate drought or mature early, better soil management and mixed cropping all spread risk. They spread fastest when farmers can test them on their own plots and see the results.

A voice in decisions. District plans and national programmes fit local conditions better when the people affected help shape them. Communities already know which paths flood, which wells run dry first and which households struggle most after a bad season.

Adaptation is sometimes treated as a technical exercise that can be designed from a capital city. The evidence points the other way. Solutions last longer when the people using them have chosen them, maintain them and can adjust them as conditions change. That is why the Centre carries out vulnerability assessments with communities rather than for them, and why we judge success by what households can do after a programme ends.

The climate in northern Ghana will keep changing. What remains open is whether the people living there will have the information, resources and say they need to change with it.

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