Understanding the roles of different stakeholders influencing the use of mobile phones to access agricultural information: A Case of Kilolo and Kilosa Districts, Tanzania

The study investigated the roles of different stakeholders influencing the use of mobile phones in accessing agricultural information in Tanzania. While information is becoming an important ingredient in agriculture, farmers in Tanzania suffer the problem of lacking access to agricultural information. Promisingly, mobile phone technology has become the most valued infrastructure which gives people access to information and services they need. Actually, the subscription of mobile phones in Tanzania is ubiquitous and is ever-growing. However, many farmers are not fully utilizing the potential that the technology prevails. There is an apparent disparity between mobile phone subscriptions which is increasingly being adopted on one hand and their uptake into farming practices. The question is, why farmers not fully utilizing the potential the technology prevails in agriculture and how could they be helped? The research adopted a multi-stage sampling technique whereby, initially two districts were purposively selected followed by a simple random sampling technique to obtain 240 respondents. Data collection methods used was: interviews, key informants interviews, and focus group discussions. Quantitative data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social (SPSS), whereby some descriptive statistics including frequencies, means, percentages and standard deviations were determined. Chi-square tests and regression analysis were also performed to test for the relationship between variables and rule out variables that are the best predictors, respectively.