Agriculture Market Information Services (AMIS) in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs): Nature, Scopes, and Challenges

Rural growth is seen as an engine to drive the economy of developing countries and the use of Agriculture Market Information Services (AMIS) is believed to enable this growth. This paper is based on a literature study and investigates the spread and use of AMIS in the least developed countries (n=49) in terms of users, management, funding, infrastructure, and data. We investigate success as well as failure aspects, and discuss the role of new technologies. Findings show that while new technologies can improve dissemination of information, collecting data economically and meeting high quality requirements remains major challenges. The study contributes by providing a comprehensive view of the challenges of AMIS in developing countries and an AMIS project evaluation matrix (IS-PEM) based on the findings, which together contribute to improving the design of future projects.