Smallholder farmers provide the majority of food production in sub-Saharan Africa. They will be severely impacted by climate change, especially because they are dependent on rain-fed irrigation. We provide a summary of challenges and opportunities in designing smart farming infrastructure in this context. We observe that innovation in technology and knowledge production is necessary to increase the efficacy of water usage and land management. Such solutions must take into account the technological constraints and their regional variability to be able to provide sustainable and scalable solutions. Such solutions also need to embrace the notion of openness, encouraging collaborative endeavour and avoiding proprietary implementations.