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The severe and disruptive climate change impacts on agriculture and food systems will continue to jeopardize the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in sub-Saharan Africa if unprecedented efforts and actions are not committed to climate-resilient development pathways. While deploying and upscaling climate-resilient technologies, is crucial, institutional innovations for mainstreaming climate-resilient innovations in agricultural development policy and programs are also necessary. Recently connecting science and policy for mainstreaming of climate-resilient technologies and practices in agricultural development policy and program has been promoted as an institutional climate-smart innovation. While the success of the science-policy interfacing initiatives with regards to variety of outcomes have been analyzed, enabling and constraining factors have not been systematically analyzed across case studies to provide new insights and lessons to inform effective science policy engagement. This paper aims to fill this gap by systematically analyzing and synthesizing barriers and enablers of effective science-policy interfacing for adaptation in agriculture and food systems across the globe and a structured analysis of case studies on national science-policy dialogue platforms in West Africa. Our synthesis of the resulting 151 cases from 62 publications and three empirical cases from Ghana, Mali and Niger presents a systematic and comprehensive stocktake of barriers and enablers of effective science-policy interfacing for adaptation in agriculture and food systems. Science-policy interfacing initiatives for adaptation in agriculture and food systems are geographically fragmented, occurring often at national level and in the context of specific projects.