Effectiveness of information and communication technologies in dissemination of agricultural information to smallholder farmers in Kilosa District, Tanzania

Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) have the potential to act as effective information dissemination channel that facilitates sustainable relationships between farmers and other stakeholders in agriculture sector. Past and on-going efforts in fostering dissemination of agricultural messages have not had the desired impacts of transforming the agricultural systems and impacting livelihoods. This is in part due to failure to capitalize on the most effective ICTs. The study assessed the effectiveness of ICTs namely radio, television and mobile phone in dissemination of agricultural information. The effectiveness is measured in terms of accessibility, timeliness as well as relevance of the information provided. Results show that 50.5% of the farmers have access to information provided by all the three ICT facilities. However radio and mobile phone are seen to be more effective as compared to television. From a survey in Kilosa 72.5% of the respondents who use radio testified that they have been receiving a particular package of agricultural information at the right time. For TV and mobile phone users the percentage of those who indicated the information to be timely is 53.8 and 95.1 respectively. In terms of relevancy; 61.5%, 51.3% and 77.8% of the farmers who are using radio, Television and Mobile phone respectively indicated that the information brought to them is suitable in their farming context. This is an indication that ICTs are effective in dissemination of agricultural information to smallholder farmers despite of some shortcomings.