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Automated agricultural practices are part of the solution to challenges in rural Africa, including the poor attitude of youths toward enrolling in agricultural courses at tertiary institutions, the unwillingness of graduates to practise farming, and climate change. Such practices include precision agriculture, automated farming systems (automated irrigation, automated fertilisation, automated crop monitoring, livestock automation, as well as data-driven decision-making facilitated by technology). This review assesses the current agricultural practices and education in tertiary institutions, how automation technologies can improve farming practices and education in tertiary institutions, the benefits and challenges of implementing automated agricultural practices, and how the identified challenges can be addressed by examining related literature and reports from 2010 to 2025 sourced from databases such as Google Scholar and Scopus. The findings indicate that precision agriculture technologies, automated irrigation systems, livestock monitoring technologies, crop management technologies, farm management information systems, and robotics and mechanization have been adopted by several African tertiary institutions and research institutes. The review further reveals that automation in African agriculture is already producing positive impacts amid several challenges. The study recommended that several challenges related to the adoption of automated agriculture be addressed by African governments and regional and international development agencies through policy interventions, funding, and capacity building to effectively leverage the benefits of automated agricultural practices.