Abstract:
This paper provides an insight on the use of various participatory approaches to develop ICTs
to the rural farming communities. The paper shows how collective groups of farmers can be
empowered through involvement of different stakeholders in a participatory action research.
The paper also discusses how participatory action research will help the farming community
in adopting ICT-based solutions for agriculture. This in turn will contribute in solving
problems as well as assisting decision making in identifying technological and agricultural
needs. In this study, a total of 64 researchers and extension workers and 320 rural farmers
were involved. Primary data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire and
interviews. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics tool. The results indicate that
many ICT- based solutions for agriculture are not adopted by farmers and other stakeholders
in various agricultural value chains because those ICTs were developed without using
participatory approaches. Moreover, the results from study indicate that participatory action
research approaches such as Participatory Communication (PV), Participatory Video (PV),
Participatory Learning and Action Research (PLAR), Farmer Participatory Research (FPR),
Informal-Mobile Learning Research (IMLR) have a significant impact on the effective use of
ICTs in rural farming community and the agricultural domain in general. Among of these
participatory approaches, the IMLR and PLAR have shown to be more effective because of
availability and interactive mobile learning environments that excite interests, commitments
and encourages participatory attitudes among famers and researchers. This study provides an
evident that ICTs has a dominant position to alleviate rural poverty and strengthen the agriculture
productivity through participatory approaches. We recommend that a strong commitment of all actors
in agriculture value chain is needed so that they can collaborate to identify the problem, analysis and
design possible solutions and finally, implement and later on use those developed ICTs to increase
agriculture productivity.
