Abstract:
This study was conducted to investigate factors influencing the provision of
extension services to livestock keepers in Kitunda Ward; a peri-urban area in Ilala
Municipality, Dar-es-salaam Region. Specifically, the study attempted to; assess
private as well as the public livestock extension agents (LEAs) in the provision of
Livestock Extension Service (LES) in Kitunda, examine the type of services and
information, professional and technical advice provided by LEAs to the livestock
keepers, identify the ways and techniques that LEAs used to disseminate LES
information and, lastly, to analyze the perceptions of livestock producers about the
quality of LES rendered to them by the public as compared to the private service
providers. A sample of 135 respondents was obtained in this cross-sectional survey,
including 30 who kept dairy cattle, 30 kept pigs, 60 kept chicken of which 30 kept
broilers and 30 layers as well as 15 LEAs, both private and public. A structured,
self-administered questionnaire was designed and used to collect data. The
researcher quantitatively used cross tabulation, percentage and frequencies to
analyse data Results. Findings were elastic and varied significantly (p<0.05) with
sex, education and occupation of respondents. For comparison of private LEAs and
public LEAs, parameter such as vaccination, treatment, postmortem, use of
molasses, and livestock record across sex, education and occupation, LES rendered
were mainly dominated by the private LEAs than public LEAs (p>0.05). Unreliable
livestock extension services was a major problem reported by 64 (53.3%) of the
respondents, that hindered the development of livestock production in Kitunda.
Apparently, LES would improve if private LEAs, input suppliers and expert
livestock keepers were more effective, qualified and assisted with subsidised
equipment.
