Resilience, as Jean Chatzky aptly points out, is not a single skill but a mix of skills and coping mechanisms. It is the ability to bounce back from challenges and setbacks while focusing on the positive. It explains the importance of resilience capacity to global climate change adversity and socioeconomic shocks affecting many African countries’ farming households and food systems dependent on rain-fed irrigation. According to Smith and Frankenberger (2018), resilience capacity is a set of conditions, attributes, or skills that enable households to achieve resilience in the face of shocks.
A recent study, “Mediation and moderation roles of resilience capacity in the shock–food-security nexus in northern Ghana,” conducted in Ghana by researchers from IITA–CGIAR in collaboration with the University for Development Studies and International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) reveals that the resilience capacity lessens or mediates the negative effects of heat stress and drought on food security. The study investigated how resilience capacity influences the connection between weather shocks and household food security.