Gender perspectives on mobile phone ownership and use: a case study of smallholder farmers in Uganda

Hunger and malnutrition can be said to be one of the important global problems that have recently been exacerbated by climate change and environmental degradation. Meanwhile, an estimated two billion people suffer from micronutrient malnutrition, mostly due to low intake of vitamins and minerals such as iron and zinc. Biofortification, an agricultural technology that can increase the micronutrient content of staples, may confer large benefits to rural families and poor children with limited access to expensive high-quality foods. Possible pathways include own-consumption when directly consumed, the income pathway when they are sold and/or the food price pathway when they increase the availability of micronutrient-rich foods in the market place. This research aims to understand the factors associated with the uptake of biofortified crop varieties (BCV) among smallholder farmers in Uganda and derive policy information to support their accelerated uptake. The analysis used two waves of panel data consisting of 6,400 observations collected from 6 districts in Uganda as part of the Feed the Future (FtF) innovation laboratory for nutrition. Descriptive analysis was used to help discern the differences between adopters and non-adopters of BCV. Double hurdle regression analysis was used to understand the factors associated with adoption and the intensity of adoption of biofortified crop varieties. Descriptive results reveal significant differences between adopters and non-adopters of BCV. Double hurdle regression analysis results indicate that the primary determinants of uptake of biofortified crop varieties include geographical location, extension staff visits, household size, and mobile phone ownership. Other important factors associated with the adoption of BCV include the amount of land owned by the household. Results suggest that extension staff visits, and mobile phone ownership were important sources of information for rural households that appear to drive the decision to adopt biofortified crop varieties. Meanwhile, household size, regional location of the household and total land owned were important motivators in adopting BCV technology. From the present analysis, it was not possible to clearly discern the key drivers of the intensity of adoption of biofortified crop varieties among smallholder households in Uganda. Key words: Biofortification, smallholder farmers, quasi experimental design, double-hurdle regression, Uganda

This study aimed at determining the drivers of access to credit among smallholder farmers in Uganda. Using a cross-sectional survey, data were collected from 374 farmers in Jinja district, followed by data analysis using descriptive statistics and Binary logistic regression model. Additionally, we used Chi-square and t-test to compare farmers with and without access to credit. The results showed that 62.83% of the farmers had access to credit. Additionally, farmers with access to credit were generally better off than those without access to credit. Having a mobile phone (p<0.01), group membership (p<0.01), access to extension (p<0.05), farm size (p<0.01) and distance to the market (p<0.05) had a positive and significant effect on credit access while non-farm income (p<0.05) showed an inverse relationship with credit access. To increase credit access among the smallholder farmers, farmers should be encouraged to purchase mobile phones and join groups where they would disseminate information on the various source of agricultural credit. Extension workers should also make effects of reaching all the farmers and training them on ways of accessing agricultural credit.

Agriculture continues to be the main source of livelihood in developing countries and smallholder farming is the most common type of agriculture practice supporting more than 70% of the population. On the other hand, information and communication technology (ICT) is quickly growing as its helping to connect easier and faster; thus, a dire need to harness it in promoting the agricultural sector. This study investigated the Information Communication Technology Devices for Agricultural Information Dissemination among Smallholder Farmers in Uganda (Rubanda, Mayuge Districts, And Mbarara City). The study adopted a cross-sectional research design that comprised a mixed methods approach of quantitative and qualitative. The instrument for this study consisted of structured questionnaires and interviews. More so, available reports and records were explored. The questionnaire was subjected to face and content validity and reliability test. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics of frequency counts and percentages. Findings show that the leading types of ICT devices for agricultural information dissemination in Rubanda District, Mayuge District, and Mbarara City were mobile phones and radios. The study recommends that the most important information to farmers should always be disseminated via phone conversation, texting, and radio for broadcast agricultural-related programs in respective local languages

This study aimed at determining the drivers of access to credit among smallholder farmers in Uganda. Using a cross-sectional survey, data were collected from 374 farmers in Jinja district, followed by data analysis using descriptive statistics and Binary logistic regression model. Additionally, we used Chi-square and t-test to compare farmers with and without access to credit. The results showed that 62.83% of the farmers had access to credit. Additionally, farmers with access to credit were generally better off than those without access to credit. Having a mobile phone (p<0.01), group membership (p<0.01), access to extension (p<0.05), farm size (p<0.01) and distance to the market (p<0.05) had a positive and significant effect on credit access while non-farm income (p<0.05) showed an inverse relationship with credit access. To increase credit access among the smallholder farmers, farmers should be encouraged to purchase mobile phones and join groups where they would disseminate information on the various source of agricultural credit. Extension workers should also make effects of reaching all the farmers and training them on ways of accessing agricultural credit

Due to the ubiquity of mobile phones around the globe, studies are beginning to analyze their influence on health. Prior work from developed countries highlights negative mental health outcomes related to overuse of mobile phones. However, there is little work on mental health impacts of mobile phone use or ownership in developing countries. This is an important gap to address because there are likely variations in mental health impacts of mobile phones between developing and developed countries, due to cultural nuances to phone use and distinct variations in financial models for obtaining mobile phone access in developing countries. To address this gap, this study analyzes survey data from 92 households in sparse, rural villages in Uganda to test two hypotheses about mobile phone ownership and mental health in a developing country context: (i) Mobile phone ownership is higher among more privileged groups, compared to less privileged groups (ie, wealth and ethnicity); and (ii) mobile phone ownership is positively associated with a culturally-relevant indicator of mental health, ‘feelings of peace’. Results indicate that households with mobile phones had higher levels of wealth on average, yet no significant differences were detected by ethnicity. As hypothesized, mobile phone ownership was associated with increased mental well-being for persons without family nearby (in the District) (p = 0.038) after adjusting for wealth, ethnicity and amount of land for crops and land for grazing. Mobile phone ownership was not significantly associated with increased mental well-being for persons with family nearby. These findings are consistent with studies of mobile phone use in other sub-Saharan African countries which find that phones are important tools for social connection and are thus beneficial for maintaining family ties. One might infer then that this increased feeling of mental well-being for persons located farther from family stems from the ability to maintain family connections. These findings are quite different from work in developed countries where mobile phone use is a source of technology-related stress or technostress.

Limited farmer access to quality seeds of improved varieties and knowledge gaps in good agronomic practices are the major factors limiting rice productivity among smallholder farmers in Uganda. Promoting high yielding aromatic rice varieties alongside good agronomic practices can unlock commercial opportunities for smallholder farmers in rice cultivation, given that 80% of rice consumers in Uganda prefer aromatic rice, which is in short supply. This case study highlights a project’s achievements to accelerate the adoption of improved aromatic rice varieties among smallholder farmers in Uganda. This project supported a few selected farmers with the seed of a new aromatic rice variety, NARORICE-1, and equipped them with agronomic skills to raise their yields from an average of 3.1 to 4.1 t/ha. Line transplanting was identified as a crucial technology to increase rice yields among smallholders. Costly and inaccessible crop-enhancing inputs such as seeds and fertilizers, and an unfair distribution of irrigation water were the two main obstacles farmers face in rice production. Farmers valued NARORICE-1 for its aroma, high yield, and early maturity. The project’s training of a community seed producer improved farmers’ access to NARORICE-1 seeds, increasing its adoption by 20% in two years. NARORICE-1 is much more in demand than any other variety and attracts a better price, making it an ideal innovation for increasing productivity and farmer’s incomes. An effective seed system and continuous farmer training are vital for accelerating impact.

Smartphone technology is increasingly being used to conduct surveys, including in low-income countries where the timely collection of socio-economic data is of great importance. This study investigated the intention of Ugandan smallholder farmers to participate in smartphone-based data collection (SPDC). The data was collected through a cross-sectional survey of 306 smallholder farmers. The results show that the willingness of farmers to participate in SPDC is high. The intention to participate in SPDC is directly influenced by attitude, subjective norms and perceived enjoyment. Indirect influences are perceived usefulness, perceived trustworthiness and perceived cost through their effects on attitude. Similarly, perceived ease of use indirectly influences intention through its effects on perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment. Statistically significant differences were found in terms of age, gender, mobile phone ownership and education. These results show the great potential of SPDC for data collection in Uganda for researchers, policy makers, agribusinesses and stakeholders.

This paper presents experiences on endeavors being undertaken to advance value addition technologies for agricultural oriented engineering designs geared towards providing solutions to small holder farmers in Uganda. Mechanization involves the substitution of crude farm implements and practices with advanced tools and systems of nurturing plants and animals and improving the shelf life of such produce using modern processing techniques. All these are done to reduce human energy exerted in the agricultural process, ensure efficiency in agricultural operations, improve agricultural productivity and in the process improve the shelf life of the produce ensuring timely and regular supply of farm produce and most importantly improving the welfare of the people and enhancing economic growth. The process involves identifying farmers needs through University-community outreach activities, formulation of challenge/opportunity into an engineering design and testing the prototype within the community prior to final design and production. The selected technologies are incubated in the University’s Technology Business Innovation and Incubation Centre (TBIIC) to achieve robustness and competitiveness. Developed technologies such as the bicycle powered irrigation pump system, portable ceramic water filter and treatment system, low cost motorized weeder and various grain post-harvesting machine tools have shown great success.

As the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) is embraced in Uganda, determinants of awareness of ICT based projects remain unknown. The intensity of use of mobile phones among smallholder farmers in the areas where such projects operate is unclear. To address this knowledge gap, 346 smallholder farmers in two ICT project sites in Mayuge and Apac districts were subjected to econometric analysis using bi-variate logistic and zero-inflated negative binomial regression models to ascertain determinants of projects’ awareness and intensity of use of mobile phones. The authors find that education, distance to input markets, and membership in a group positively influence awareness. The decision to use a mobile phone for agricultural purposes is affected by distance to electricity and land cultivated and negatively influenced by being a member of any farmer group. Lastly, intensity of mobile phone use is affected by age, farming as the major occupation, and distance to an internet facility, being a member of a project, having participated in an agricultural project before, value of assets, size of land cultivated, possession of a mobile phone, and proximity to agricultural offices. The paper discusses policy implications of these findings.

As the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) is embraced in Uganda, determinants of awareness of ICT based projects remain unknown. The intensity of use of mobile phones among smallholder farmers in the areas where such projects operate is unclear. To address this knowledge gap, 346 smallholder farmers in two ICT project sites in Mayuge and Apac districts were subjected to econometric analysis using bi-variate logistic and zero-inflated negative binomial regression models to ascertain determinants of projects’ awareness and intensity of use of mobile phones. The authors find that education, distance to input markets, and membership in a group positively influence awareness. The decision to use a mobile phone for agricultural purposes is affected by distance to electricity and land cultivated and negatively influenced by being a member of any farmer group. Lastly, intensity of mobile phone use is affected by age, farming as the major occupation, and distance to an internet facility, being a member of a project, having participated in an agricultural project before, value of assets, size of land cultivated, possession of a mobile phone, and proximity to agricultural offices. The paper discusses policy implications of these findings.

Why Digital Health Literacy Matters in Rural Sub-Saharan Africa:How Bridging the Digital Health Literacy Gap Could Improve Access to Health Services and Social Equality Ismaila Ouedraogo, Roland Benedikter, Borlli Michel Jonas Some, and Gayo Diallo Digital Health Literacy Matters Around the world, mobile phones have been used for quite some years now to put healthcare systems into interactive action through various mobile health applications. The results regarding efficiency, access, greater social equality, and interconnectivity are proven, and they promise to mitigate economic and educational gaps. All this is increasingly the case in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where the technological prerequisites are quickly evolving. About 500 million people in SSA—more than 46 percent of the region's population—were subscribing to mobile services in 2020, and their numbers are forecast to reach 615 million in 2025 (GSMA 2022). In the meantime, coverage works also in the structurally poorest areas. In 2020, 2G mobile network coverage in Burkina Faso was 81 percent for the territory and 92.4 percent for the population (ARCEP 2020). The high penetration rate of mobile phones and the increasing coverage of the mobile network has created a vast variety of opportunities for health provision. Mobile devices can no longer be ignored in practical health delivery and disease prevention workflows. The positive potential of the application of digital health tools is obvious, and it is often said that mobile devices will be a key vehicle on the road to achieving universal health coverage in the Global South. Despite this promise, the deployment of digital health tools in SSA faces many challenges, such as an urban-rural gap, a gender divide, low digital literacy, and a shortage of electricity and interconnectivity [End Page 134] (Holst et al. 2020). Poorly designed, unsustainable, unsafe, and irresponsible digital health products circulate that waste time, energy, and physical and financial resources. Digital health literacy increasingly correlates with digital inclusion—a situation where people can access and use information and communication technologies to take charge of and improve their health. Inversely, digital health technologies become useless when users do not have the skills, connectivity, mutual exchange, or understanding to use them, or do not have access when they need them. Designing digital health solutions that fit with the digital literacy prerequisites and skills of low-qualified users matters crucially in SSA for sustainably sufficient coverage. The ability to find, understand, and use e-health resources is critical for consumers to be able to use current and future health services. Digital health literacy is therefore no longer an option but has become a fundamental requirement in SSA in the design of inclusive solutions. Innovative Mobile Health Initiatives in SSA during the COVID-19 Pandemic The advent of the global COVID-19 pandemic, which began in 2020, has accelerated the pace at which mobile technology is becoming commonplace in people's healthcare. In many countries, healthcare systems rapidly shifted to enabling medical consultations digitally. The increase in mobile phone usage was correlated with an increase in access to information, with phones acting as information relays. Cell phones were used to disseminate pandemic-related information to disadvantaged communities in SSA. Several examples catch the eye. In Burkina Faso, Viamo is a social enterprise that understood this paradigm shift early. It attempted to connect disadvantaged individuals and organizations with appropriate information via mobile devices to enable them to make better decisions (Sandwidi 2020). Through its mobile services, it had played an integral role in bridging the information gap among communities in rural areas long before the advent of the pandemic (UNDP, n.d.). Among other initiatives, it partnered in 2010 with Orange Burkina, a primarily national telecommunication company, to launch a mobile service that allows underserved communities to have free access to information in four of Burkina Faso's most spoken local languages: Mooré, Dioula, Fulfulde, and Gourmanché. Viamo instructions are provided mainly orally, in the same four languages, to include those who cannot read. These approaches, hailed by many customers, have evolved over time. Since 2017, Viamo's platform has covered many themes, including COVID-19 orientation, family planning, health, agriculture, early childhood development, weather forecasts, news, and entertainment. Each theme is usually subdivided...

Poor smallholder farmers in Uganda live at or below subsistence level. They are vulnerable to multiple risks and insecurities and have limited access to capital markets and insurance. Their asset base is a reflection of the economic conditions of the farming households. In this article we propose a model to estimate household sequencing patterns in asset acquisition among rural smallholder farmers in Uganda using only cross-section data. The principal assumption underlying the model is that people tend to accumulate assets in a particular dominant order, which could arise from a combination of indivisibilities and missing capital markets. The model is applied to a field-survey dataset consisting of 938 farm households from three districts in Uganda. The physical assets included are simple count data of household durables and agricultural tools. The model predicts the distribution of asset ownership, conditional on the number of assets owned. The estimated model predicts highly concentrated conditional distributions, consistent with the assumption of sequencing patterns of asset acquisition. Based on the sequencing patterns the paper proposes a low-cost poverty monitoring instrument using only asset count data.

Application of a Bayesian network modelling approach to predict the cascading effects of COVID-19 restrictions on the planting activities of smallholder farmers in Uganda

Probability weighting is a marked feature of decision-making under risk. For poor people in rural areas of developing countries, how probabilities are evaluated matters for livelihoods decisions, especially the probabilities associated with losses. Previous studies of risky choice among poor people in developing countries seldom consider losses and do not offer a refined tracking of the probability-weighting function (PWF). We investigate probability weighting among smallholder farmers in Uganda, separately for losses and for gains, using a method (common consequence ladders) that allows refined tracking of the PWF for a population with low levels of literacy. For losses, we find marked probability weighting near zero, which is in line with evidence found in Western labs. For gains, the absence of probability weighting is remarkable, particularly its absence near 100%. We also find marked differences in probability weighting for traditional farmers which are in line with the observed livelihoods strategies in the study area.

Milk production in sub-Saharan African countries has increasingly gained attention from both private and public sectors due to its role in food security, nutrition, and rural livelihoods. The emphasis has been on devising strategies to increase production and efficiency within the dairy value chain, with a particular focus on minimizing post-harvest milk losses among smallholder farmers. One of the interventions for reducing these losses is the preservation of milk freshness overnight. Considering that most smallholder dairy farms are located in rural areas with limited or no access to grid electricity, effective solutions need -to rely on renewable energy sources, such as solar or biogas-powered cooling systems. Current milk preservation solutions available in the market vary significantly in terms of storage capacity, ranging from 2.5 liters to 500 liters. Many of these solutions fail to meet the specific needs of smallholder farmers in Uganda and other sub-Saharan African countries, where dairy farming structures and management practices are relatively uniform. A typical smallholder farmer in Uganda, for instance, owns approximately 10 dairy cows and operates on about 2 hectares of land. Despite the availability of various milk preservation technologies, many of these solutions are either too costly or do not align with the production capacities and financial constraints of smallholder farmers. Consequently, post-harvest milk losses remain a persistent challenge, leading to economic losses and reduced profitability for farmers. This study followed an integrative review approach to assess the existing body of literature on existing developed off-grid milk preservation systems piloted in sub-Saharan Africa. Data sources included project websites, published literature, and technology reports. The review aimed at profiling existing technologies, their efficacy and accessibility, and key bottlenecks that hinder the technology adoption in low-resource settings. This review also established a representative price point that aligns with the financial capabilities of smallholder farmers based on prevailing farming practices. By evaluating these factors, the review provides recommendations for solution developers to design context-tailored technologies that can better serve these farmers. Addressing these challenges is crucial for the overall sustainability of the dairy value chain development in sub-Saharan Africa. Key words: Smallholder dairy, milk losses, freshness preservation, renewable energy, low-resource engineering