Home gardens enable farmers to secure their food availability, mitigate environmental change, increase consistency of social-cultural values and protect species provenance. In other hands, they conserve biodiversity and sequester carbon, and improve a biogeochemical process even if the home garden has multifunctional values. For the country, they have yet to be given special consideration by decision makers and scientists. The objective of this review is to identify the factors hindering the adoption of home garden agroforestry practices in parts of Ethiopia; the second is to show existing opportunities to scale-up the practice by advocating the dual purpose that is socioeconomic and part of the climate change mitigation system. Although biodiversity has been reduced in Ethiopia, there are potentially suitable agro-ecological zones that can minimize the frequency of degradation to deal with the influence of climate change due to EI Niño and its effect on food crises. The dominant species in various home gardens are economically appreciated as they fulfill a demand. Women are more engaged than men in home garden activities which create job opportunities and foster social acceptance. There is also available indigenous and scientific knowledge that has to be managed and administered by concerned stakeholders. Many researchers found that there were high species diversity, suitable environments, good experience, available products, a willingness of women to participate, and important component interdependence with flexible arrangements, but small farm size and discouraged land and tree tenure were major impediments. The government and responsible bodies should promote community service and research conducted on home garden agroforestry. To improve sustainable home garden production systems in the country, government should undertake positive actions like agroforestry awareness creation, scale-up of appropriate home garden components combined with identification of appropriate agro-ecological zones elsewhere in the country, provide support through cultivating good and multipurpose hybrid varieties, and formulate policies and strategies that encourage farmers to make home gardens an alternative to secure food stability.

Keywords: Home garden, carbon sequestration, socio-economic impact, gender, species diversity, policy and strategy