Background: Rainfall variability, droughts, and floods undermine rice based farming systems in Benin. Hydroagricultural developments are expected to stabilize water access, enable intensification, and strengthen resilience, but adoption and outcomes depend on infrastructure quality, access to land, credit, services and inputs, and collective-management rules. Methods: This systematic review follows PRISMA 2020. A bilingual PICo/PECO strategy covered 2000–2026 and combined evidence from Benin, West Africa, and comparable smallholder irrigation systems in Africa. The scoping corpus comprised 42 studies. Quality was assessed using MMAT and ROBINS-I principles. The synthesis addressed adoption, productivity and profitability, sustainability, and climate resilience, with direct correspondence to the 110-item producer questionnaire. Results: Adoption is supported by reliable access to water and equipment, agricultural extension, training, credit, organizational membership, tenure security, and proximity to infrastructure. Available evidence from Benin indicates positive effects of irrigation on rice yields, profitability, and food security, although insufficient maintenance, recurrent costs, and selection bias constrain causal interpretation. Irrigation strengthens resilience when systems remain functional during shocks and are combined with collective governance, conservation practices, and diversification. Conclusion: Empirical analysis should distinguish access, reported adoption, effective use, intensity of use, and system functionality. An integrated strategy combining adoption models, endogenous-treatment or weighting approaches, production functions, and multidimensional sustainability and resilience indices is recommended