Mobile Telephony and Agriculture Information Communication in Ghana: the Ho West District under Review

Abstract

The challenge for the Ghanaian government and policy makers is to regain the dynamism in agricultural sector as was evident in the 1970s during the era of operation feed your selfrevolution. In agriculture, education and access to knowledge creates conditions that enable farmers to acquire and use information for decision making and technical matters effectively. This leads to growth in the adoption of technology; the use of modern inputs like machines and fertilizers improves yield. (Mittal and Mehar, 2012) Passing on information to farmers is a basic fundamental role of any agricultural extension services to effect learning process and social change (Demiryürek, 2008). In fact, the importance of information for effective functioning of any enterprise has been a central concern of economic theory for some time. Information can be generated, processed, transformed and shared through complex processes of coding and decoding, generally known as communication (Röling, 1988). However, the generation of new information and knowledge need new information and communication channels. Therefore, better selection of information and communication channels, ensures the effectiveness of extension programmes in agriculture. Meanwhile agricultural extension depends to a large extent on information exchange on the one hand and a broad range of other actors on the other (Mabe and Oladele, 2012), ICTs therefore can be used as a medium in bridging the information gap. Similarly, Greenridge (2003) and Lightfoot (2003) also opined that there is a growing recognition of farmers and members of rural communities who are realizing the importance of knowledge, information and appropriate learning methods in order to move towards agricultural development. Therefore, in order to benefit the rural people, extensionists are grappling with the question of how to harness ICTs to improve rural livelihoods in order to contribute towards better information exchange and access. In this regard, extension practitioners are also interested in experimenting with innovative e-extension initiatives (Saravanan, 2010). The possession of mobile phones particularly has become a necessity in the contemporary society irrespective of age, status, profession, income groups or place of residence. As 2 such, mobile phones have been regarded as the widely accessed tool among the farmers for communication and also accessing agriculture-related information particularly for the marketing of produce (Chhachar et al., 2014). In Ghana, the task of providing agricultural information to farmers is primarily vested with government agencies or the public extension services. The Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), The Institute for Scientific and Industrial Research (CISR), and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are responsible for disseminating technologies and agricultural information to the farmers. The information needs of the farming community are partly addressed by the public extension services in District/ Municipal Agricultural Extension Services (DAES) and supported by Development Partners (DPs). Over the past few years, the number of extension agents has also dramatically decreased due to unemployment in Ghana. In this context, mobile technologies can offer the means for development in developing countries (Rashid and Elder, 2009). ICTs, therefore, offer opportunities to reach more people through easy access to local or global information and knowledge. Hence, with the new emerging paradigm of agricultural development, old ways of delivering important services to citizens are being challenged; traditional societies are also being transformed into knowledge societies all over the world which makes people living in the villages think and do things differently (Meera et al., 2004). For instance, Jabir (2011) reported that ICT-based information delivery has helped the livestock farmers of Uttar Pradesh in India in making significantly better quality decisions on various livestock practices as compared to ICT non-users. Further, the application of ICT among farmers of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu of India reported that information acquisition and facilitating transactions in input and output markets by ICT-based initiatives have also helped farmers in reducing transaction cost (Adhiguru and Devi, 2012)