Characterizing meso-level organizations engaged in climate change adaptation work in Africa: A configurational analysis

Abstract

Climate change adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa depends on the effectiveness of meso-level organizations (MLOs) in negotiating the needs of rural community beneficiaries and the aims of macro-level policy and finance actors. In this region, however, the traditional sector-based typology of organizations – public, private, non-profit – is insufficient to capture the complexity of MLOs tasked with activating and scaling climate adaptation. Further, it is unclear what type of MLOs are likely to be associated with more transformative climate adaptation performance outcomes. Building on a theoretical framework that posits nine MLO organizational sub-dimensions supporting climate adaptation, this paper takes a configurational approach to examine (1) whether distinct clusters of MLOs can be empirically identified based on the framework’s sub-dimensions, and (2) how clusters of MLOs are associated with different organizational performance outcomes. A configurational approach moves beyond additive account of independent organizational capacities and examines how interdependencies of organizational attributes contribute to organizational outcomes. Using survey data of MLOs in four sub-Saharan countries, latent profile analysis results show two acceptable models: a four-profile model characterized by a largely hierarchical ordering of organizational capacities, and a six-profile model reflecting more heterogeneous configurations. In the four-profile model, higher-capacity profiles report significantly better performance outcomes. In the six-profile model, two profiles are at the opposite extremes, while other configurations achieve comparable levels of performance, showing evidence for equifinality. These findings further validate the theoretical framework and highlight the importance of our approach in explaining how organizations can enable climate adaptation outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Environmental Science & Policy, 2026 · DOI ↗