Awareness And Use Of Information Communication Technologies Among Cattle Farmers In Oke-Ogun Area Of Oyo State

Abstract

Increasing the access to information and augmenting the process of information exchange, Information Communication Technology (ICT) offers the potential to increase efficiency, productivity, competitiveness and growth in various business and social sectors. The study thus investigated the use of ICTs among cattle farmers in Oke-ogun Area of Oyo State. Snow ball technique was used to sample 75 cattle farmers from four randomly selected Local Government Areas in Oke-ogun area and structured questionnaire was used to elicit information on respondents’ personal characteristics, awareness of ICT, use of ICT components and messages in cattle management. Findings revealed that the most frequently used ICT components are telephone, radio, meetings/ workshop, television and camera with total frequency scores of 106, 100, 99, 48 and 47 respectively. On the other hand, ICT tools such as DVD (9), drama (12), internet (14) and computers (17) were the least frequently used in livestock management. Age and level of education had significant relationships with use of ICT (r = 0.353 and 0.612, p<0.05). The study concluded that awareness and utilization of ICT among the cattle farmers was largely limited to the traditional rather than modern ICT tools. It is recommended that extension agents and other relevant information dissemination agencies working with livestock farmers pay priority attention to the use of traditional ICT as primary tools of information dissemination while they also accelerate efforts to get the farmers acquainted with modern ICT tools.

Key words: Technology use, Information Communication Technology, Traditional communication tools, Cattle farmers.