THE ROLE OF INFORMATION COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY FOR AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION SERVICE IN ETHIOPIA (original) (raw)
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Abstract This review examines the impact of ICT enhanced service delivery system on agricultural extension services delivery in Ethiopia. Agricultural extension services include transferring knowledge to farmers, advising and educating farmers in their decision making, enabling farmers to clarify their own goals and possibilities, and stimulating desirable agricultural developments. ICT in Ethiopia has remained one of the prime movers in the development of agriculture and invariably in the rural development. This paper reviewed the role ICT for agricultural extension services in the development of agriculture and rural transformation in Ethiopia. It is the belief of this paper that no nation will have real growth in the agricultural sector without effective ICT based extension service. It is also the belief of this paper that total eradication of agricultural development problems can be achieved through extension service approach if the role of extension is properly conceived and effectively administered. The emergence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in this era has opened new avenues in agricultural knowledge management that could play an important role in meeting the prevailing challenges related to innovation, sharing, exchanging and disseminating agricultural information, knowledge and technologies to the intended smallholder farmers. Keywords: ICT; extension service; central role; Ethiopia
Ethiopian Journal of Agricultural Sciences, 2017
This study presents extension workers’ familiarization and application of reachable Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to provide agricultural advisory services. For the purpose of the study, 40 Agricultural Extension workers at district and rural villages were purposively selected from two districts and data collected using paper based questionnaire. The data was then analyzed using descriptive statistical tools and chi-square statistic. The study identified that the majority of (87.5%) of the respondents interviewed had moderate and low familiarization levels of available modern ICTs. The study also found that 70% of the extension workers had not using available ICTs while giving advisory services to the farmers. This might be on account of many factors such as limited access to ICT tools (computers, internet service, agricultural information CDs, and other facilities,) poor quality of internet services, limited awareness on some information and reference materials,...
Application of ICTs in Transforming Agricultural Extension
Application of ICTs in Transforming Agricultural Extension , 2019
Purpose-The purpose of this study was to investigate how extension service providers employed ICTs in transforming agricultural extension information service delivery in Tana River County, Kenya. The study examined how the application of ICTs can help to transform public extension service delivery thereby improving the farmers' access to agricultural information. Methodology-Data was collected from 456 farmers in Tana River County in Kenya. The farmers were identified using simple random sampling. Data was collected using structured questionnaires and interview guides. Data analysis was performed using simple descriptive statistics. Findings-The findings revealed that there was limited application of ICTs in the dissemination of agricultural extension information in Tana River County, Kenya. However, where application was prominent, an increase in productivity was noted. Implications-The findings of this study may be used by the County Government of Tana River and the national Government of Kenya to improve agricultural productivity in the country through improved extension services. Originality-The study was an original research conducted in a remote food-insecure county in Kenya. It links agricultural productivity to effective access to extension information services supported by ICTs.
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY (ICT) IN AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION
Agriculture can serve as an important engine for economic growth in developing countries. Yet yields in developing countries have lagged far behind those in developed countries for decades. One potential mechanism for increasing yields and hence agricultural production is the use of improved technologies, such as fertilizers, improved seeds and cropping techniques and others. Traditional public-sector programs have attempted to overcome barriers to technological adoption by using agricultural extension services at the village or farm level. Yet despite decades of experience with a variety of extension programs and new technologies, adoption rates still remain relatively low in most developing countries. The rapid spread of information and communication technologies (ICT) in developing countries over the past decade offers a unique opportunity to transfer knowledge and facilitate technological adoption via ICT-based agricultural extension programs. Numerous studies (Aker 2010, Nwachukwu 2013, Anyanwu 2013), on the effective communication and adoption of agricultural and other technologies have attempted to identify the determinants of technology adoption and potential barriers to it. While the specific determinants of technology adoption depend upon the setting and the technology type, there are some common factors that have been identified both in the theoretical and empirical literature. These include education levels, wealth, tastes, risk preferences, complementary inputs (land, labor and credit) and access to information and learning – either learning by doing or learning from others. Of these, the role of information and social networks has received particular attention.
The Challenges of Utilizing Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in Agriculture Extension
International Journal of Scientific Research in Science, Engineering and Technology, 2015
The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in agriculture and rural development has surged in the past decade. Growing attention has focused on the contributions of these technologies to agriculture and rural development. ICT includes computers and communication technology along with associated software. The activities of generating, processing, transmitting, disseminating, sorting, archiving and retrieving information constitute the information industry. Innovation in ICT to an increase agriculture production and helps farmer’s in decision making in growth of their crops. ICTs have the potential to reach many farmers with timely and accessible content. But the content that the ICTs deliver has more relevance if it is localized and context specific, as this improves the value and action ability of the information, which can have important impacts on farm management. In this paper covered challenges of utilizing ICT in agriculture extension, as ICT took initiate man...
The study used qualitative and quantitative procedures to collect the data from 291 extension agents and ICTs service providers such as internet cafes, computer training and business centers, computer firms, and information centers in the selected districts capitals in Ghana. Means, percentages, frequencies, and standard deviation were generated to describe the general trend of the data. The study revealed that extension agents have high and positive demand for ICTs for extension. There is a prospect for involving private and public institutional sources in extension delivery. The respondents have high knowledge about the advantages of using ICTs which will probably enhance their application of the technologies in extension. However, extension agents need ICT training opportunities, infrastructure, financial resources and technical backstopping to enhance the use of ICTs in extension. The study recommends a systems approach involving major stakeholders such as training institutions, Internet service providers, research institutions, farmers, policy makers to collaborate in the use of ICTs for extension. (1988), extension workers are often ineffective in their communication with farmer because they lack training in the scientific principles and methods of communication. They often have technical, but not communication orientation .
International Journal of Agricultural Extension, 2020
This review paper analyses the challenge and opportunities of information and communication technologies for dissemination of agricultural information in Ethiopia. Understanding the challenges and opportunities of information and communication technologies enables to solve the problem of information problem to smallholder farmers. The data was collected, assessed and reviewed from recent secondary data sources from Central statistical agency, and scholarly articles published on the issue of information and communication technology in agriculture (ICT 4 Ag).Compared to the other sector like governance, health and education sectors, ICT-adoption in the agricultural sector has started relatively late in Ethiopia. Even though it is in infant stage, there are many agricultural ICT related service and application in Ethiopia. The current radical penetration of ICTs like mobile phone, website, social media and other internet/online services brings an immense prospect to farmers to create, ...
2013
The conventional agricultural extension service in Tanzania is mainly provided by extension officers visiting farmers to provide agricultural advisory service. This system of extension service provision faces a number of challanges including the few number of extension officers and limited resources. This article assessess the effectiveness of an impact-driven, radio-based extension service delivery system that has been introduced in some rural areas of Tanzania. The system aims to enable extension officers to reach many farmers with minimum efforts. However little is known about the effectiveness of this new extension service delivery system. Structured questionnaire, focus group discussion, interviews and participant observation were used to collect data from 55 small holder farmers who who had been receiving an impact-driven, radiobased extension services through Farmer Voice Radio project. Additional data were collected from interviewing extension officers and from archives of participating community radio stations. The results indicate that in some rural areas, farmers have started sharing agricultural information and best practices. Some farmers have also started to change their farming practices. This brings a new finding that farmers can adopt and practice easily what is aired by their fellow farmers in the community radio stations.
JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, 2018
The development of agriculture plays a prominent role in a nation's economy, more so in the case of developing countries of the world. In India, agriculture is considered the backbone of the economy. Given the diversity of agro-ecological conditions across the country and the wide range of producers (small, and medium, large), the Indian agricultural enterprise is inevitably faced with a great diversity of needs, opportunities and prospects. With information being identified as a crucial component of the agricultural value chain, there is an urgent need to devise strategies which will enable improved access to such information as well as facilitate the exchange of information between stakeholders. Many impact evaluation studies reveal that the public-sector extension services despite using a variety of extension programs have not seen much success because they lack technological integration. Studies show that agricultural productivity is considerably influenced by human capital consisting of agricultural and rural extension programs. Thus there needs to be increased emphasis on involving all the stakeholders such as policy makers, educators, scientists, extension personnel in research, development and technology transfer activities and regular training of educators/researchers/extension personnel in SAUs and officers of the agricultural development departments in the use of ICTs. In this regard there is a need to probe into the factors that influence the current usage pattern of ICT among the educators and scientists involved in extension. This research paper makes an attempt to study the same. This study is concentrated in the Northeastern region (NER) of India as the region reportedly lags behind in technology implementation and adoption by farmers.