An enquiry into the prospects of mobile telephone for agricultural information delivery in Ondo State, Nigeria

Abstract

Extension is essentially a communication process whereby various  participants are linked together and exchange information to enhance their potential and standard of living. It makes use of different channels  through which this information could be passed across of which mobile phones constitute one of the contemporary channels. This study was carried out to investigate the prospects of mobile telephone in  dissemination of agricultural information in Ondo state, Nigeria. A  multistage sampling technique was used for the study, both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse results. The study revealed that the majority (85%) of the respondents in the study area was male. Those with primary education and above were 60.2%. Majority accessed  information through friends (79.6%) and radio (75.2%). Mobile phones were used by 81.4% of which Nokia was the most common brand of  handsets (57.3%). The various functions on respondents’ phones include browsing facilities (31.9%), camera (37.2%), video player and recording (31.9%), blue tooth (30.1%) and radio (45.1%). Their ability to operate these functions was low; about 90% cannot use MP3 on their phone. Majority (71.7%) were ready to purchase phones with multimedia facilities and to receive extension messages through phones (93.8%). There was a significant but negative correlation relationship between age of  respondents and their operational proficiency of mobile phones (r= -0.50), but positive relationship exists between education of respondents and operational proficiency of mobile phone (r= 0.60).Government should go into partnership with communication outfits to provide cheaper phones at subsidized rate as well as develop agricultural information packages to be used on mobile phones.

KEYWORDS: Mobile phones, agricultural information, global system for mobile communication (GSM), telecommunication, extension agent, rural