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Understanding the determinants of improved agricultural technology adoption is an important
component of increasing agricultural productivity and incomes of smallholders to reduce poverty and
hunger, which are the top two Sustainable Development Goals. Among the actions needed to achieve
this, particular attention is paid to the identification and promotion of productivity and resilience
enhancing agricultural practices. The micro-economic literature on the analysis of the drivers of
agricultural technology adoption is well-established since the Green Revolution. Although numerous
seminal reviews of this literature have been published, most of these were theoretical or conceptual
reviews and focus on earlier literature from continents other than Africa, which is the continent facing
the biggest productivity challenge now. This paper synthesizes the findings of this literature focusing
on Africa using a meta-data set that brings together the results of 168 recently published papers. We
find that most of this literature focuses on agronomic practices and that agroforestry and livestock
related studies make up less than one fifth of the total published papers. Eleven determinants,
primarily those related to information access, wealth indicators and tenure security, are found to
increase adoption more than chance would dictate in the literature. Our findings provide evidence to
support recommendations for future policy and research.