Determinants of digital literacy among smallholder farmers: a case of Hai and Moshi Districts, Kilimanjaro- Tanzania
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Date
2022
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ResearchGate
Abstract
Access to agricultural extension services, social media, and training on ICTs in developing countries stand a good chance of impacting significantly small-scale farmers' livelihoods and therefore, the digital literacy level of smallholder farmers is highly influential. The extent to which an opportunity for farmers to use information communication technologies (ICT) to access agricultural information for the transformation of their subsistence farming has been tapped by smallholder farmers requires empirical investigation. Therefore, the current study determined smallholder farmers’ digital literacy and the factors associated with the same. The study adopted a cross-sectional research design whereby data were collected using a structured questionnaire from 200 purposefully selected smallholder farmers through a multistage sampling procedure. In addition, four focus group discussions and five key informant interviews were used to collect complementary data. An index score and Likert scale gauged digital literacy. Data were analysed by using IBM- SPSS (Version 20) while STATA software was used for binary logistic regression analysis to determine factors associated with smallholder farmers’ digital literacy. Study findings show that 74.5% (95% CI: 0.68 to 0.81), 0% (95% CI: 0 to 0) and 25.5% (95% CI: 0.19 to 0.32) of the farmers fall under the category of low, moderate and high digital literacy levels respectively. Study findings show further that one’s sex (p=0.068), training on ICTs (p=0.013), access to social media (p=0.001), extension services (p=0.006), and support from NGOs (p=0.000) were significantly associated with farmers’ digital literacy. It is concluded the smallholder farmers had a low level of digital literacy due to a lack of training and skills to make good use of ICT. Therefore, it is recommended that the agricultural and ICT departments in Hai and Moshi Districts and other interested stakeholders should collaborate and conduct awareness campaigns and training in rural areas to enhance digital literacy among smallholder farmers to enable farmers to use ICT and transform their agricultural production.
Description
Tengeru Community Development Journal, Vol. 9, No.2, 2022
Keywords
Digital literacy, ICT, Smallholder farmers, Agricultural productivity
Citation
ttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/376356687