Access And Use Of Information Communication Technologies Among Rural Farmers In Enugu State, Nigeria

ABSTRACT

This work examines the access and use of information communication technologies (ICT)

among rural farmers in Enugu State. It is the contention of this study that there is a lacuna

between access and usage of ICT among the rural farmers in Enugu state and generally in

Nigeria. This study applauds the impact of ICT in enhancing the agricultural productivity in

Nigeria especially as it concerns the rural communities. However, this work is designed to

ascertain types of ICTs available to the farmers in rural area of Enugu state, determine the

farmers’ level of access to ICTs, determine the level of usage of ICTs by farmers, determine

the extent to which these ICTs have been perceived to be effective in information

dissemination to rural farmers; and identify the persuaded challenges to effective use of

ICTs among the rural farmers. In the methodology, data were collected mainly from

secondary and primary sources and the work was designed to cover the three agricultural

zones in Enugu state namely; Enugu-North, Enugu-East, and Enugu-West zones. In each of

these agricultural zones, one local government was sampled out. In Enugu-North zone we

sampled out Nsukka, Enugu-West zone we sampled Awgu, while in Enugu-East zone we

sample out Isi-Uzo. Forty farmers were selected from each of the above named local

governments making a total of 120 farmers. In the measurement of variables focus was

drawn on the respondents’ sex, age, marital status, educational qualification, years spent to

acquire formal education, years of farming experiences, primary occupation. The use of

Pearson correlation coefficient at 0.05 level was adopted to analyze the data. Results of the

study showed that a high proportion (38%) of the respondents were within the age bracket

of 40-49 years and their mean age was 46 years. Majority (67%) of the respondents were

males. Most of the rural farmers (97.3%) were married. A good proportion (23.3%) of the

farmers had WAEC as their highest educational qualification. The average year of working

experience was 21 years. Also, majority (56.3%) of the respondents had farming as their

primary occupation. The findings also revealed that most of the farmers were aware of

radio, television, mobile phone and video CD players, while few others were aware of the

other ICT tools. Most of these ICT tools were not available to farmers however many of

them had radio, mobile phone, television and video CD player. It was evident from the

study that many of the farmers had access to radio, television and mobile phone but most of

the other modern ICTs were not accessible to them. It was also found that these ICT tools

that were accessible were often being used by farmers and were perceived to be very

effective in obtaining information, and communicating effectively among the farmers. The

major constraints that hindered the use of ICT by farmers were epileptic power supply

(M=2.73), poor finance (M=2.54), High cost of ICT infrastructure (M=2.30), Lack of

connectivity to access (M=2.23), Lack of adequate awareness (M=2.22), and Government

policies (M=2.18), etc.