<p>African agriculture has become a highly contested landscape shaped by competing global aid paradigms, yet the interplay between top-down donor interventions and localised socio-ecological realities remains poorly understood. While international donors frequently impose rigid development blueprints, such as Norwegian-backed Conservation Agriculture (CA) or Chinese-backed commercial contract farming, it remains unclear whether these macro-level institutional models or grounded, micro-level agrarian practices ultimately determine smallholder resilience. Using a political ecology framework, this study analyses household survey data from 545 smallholders in Eastern Zambia to disentangle the effects of donor affiliation, farming systems (CA vs. conventional), and structural factors on food security. Results indicate that localised farming systems are the primary predictor of household resilience, outweighing donor identity. Once farming practices and contextual factors were controlled for, aid modality (Norwegian vs. Chinese) lost statistical significance. Instead, households employing CA showed significantly higher dietary and crop diversity and shorter hunger periods, effectively mitigating vulnerabilities imposed by seasonal bottlenecks. Crucially, however, food insecurity remained deeply structural and gendered; female-headed households were disproportionately vulnerable across all metrics, exposing the failure of universal, climate-smart technologies to overcome entrenched, patriarchal resource inequities. Furthermore, export-oriented contract farming actively reduced crop diversity, stripping farmers of traditional ecological safety nets. We conclude that sustainable agrarian transitions cannot be dictated by imported global blueprints but require interventions that address systemic inequalities and empower locally adapted, ecologically diverse farming systems.</p>