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Real mobiles: Kenyan and Zambian smallholder farmers' current attitudes towards mobile phones

Authors:

Susan P. Wyche,

Melissa Densmore,

Brian Samuel GeyerAuthors Info & Claims

ICTD '15: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development

Article No.: 9, Pages 1 - 10

https://doi.org/10.1145/2737856.2738013

Published: 15 May 2015 Publication History

Abstract

What are rural farmers in sub-Saharan Africa's current attitudes towards their mobile phones? We draw from qualitative studies of smallholder farmers in Kenya and Zambia to answer this question. A review of ongoing efforts to develop mobile phone services for farmers paired with critiques of the "colonial impulse" embedded in future-oriented visions of technology use guided our study. Our findings suggest there is a mismatch between the design of mobile phone applications and our participants' perceptions and usage of their devices. We also discovered several understudied barriers that hinder adoption of mobile services: the influx of counterfeit and substandard mobile phones, distrust of the content being delivered via SMS and reservations about the spiritual and health consequences accompanying phone use. We use these findings to encourage Information and Communication Technology and Development (ICTD) researchers and practitioners to re-examine the mobile phone. Specifically, we suggest developing interventions that teach farmers how to better use phones and present recommendations for improving their design.

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Raghunath AMetzger AEaston HLiu XWang FWang YZhao YMpogole HAnderson R(2024)eKichabi v2: Designing and Scaling a Dual-Platform Agricultural Technology in Rural TanzaniaProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642099(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
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Raghunath ANdubuisi-Obi IMpogole HAnderson R(2023)Beyond Digital Financial Services: Exploring Mobile Money Agents in Tanzania as General ICT IntermediariesACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/36163862:1(1-26)Online publication date: 6-Sep-2023
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Index Terms

Real mobiles: Kenyan and Zambian smallholder farmers' current attitudes towards mobile phones
1. Applied computing
  1. Computers in other domains
    1. Personal computers and PC applications
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing and business

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cover image ACM Other conferences

ICTD '15: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development

May 2015

429 pages

ISBN:9781450331630

DOI:10.1145/2737856

General Chair:
Arul Chib
Nanyang Technological University
,
Program Chairs:
Matthew Kam
Google
,
Jenna Burrell
University of California, Berkeley

Copyright © 2015 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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IPID: International Network for Postgraduate Students in the area of ICT4D
Internet Society: Internet Society
BRAC: BRAC
Microsoft Research: Microsoft Research
ICANN: Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers
IBM: IBM

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

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Published: 15 May 2015

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ICTD '15: The Seventh International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development

May 15 - 18, 2015

Singapore, Singapore

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ICTD '15 Paper Acceptance Rate 22 of 116 submissions, 19%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 22 of 116 submissions, 19%

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3699740
Raghunath AMetzger AEaston HLiu XWang FWang YZhao YMpogole HAnderson R(2024)eKichabi v2: Designing and Scaling a Dual-Platform Agricultural Technology in Rural TanzaniaProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642099(1-16)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613904.3642099
Raghunath ANdubuisi-Obi IMpogole HAnderson R(2023)Beyond Digital Financial Services: Exploring Mobile Money Agents in Tanzania as General ICT IntermediariesACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/36163862:1(1-26)Online publication date: 6-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3616386
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Ziegler MWack MIngutia NMuiruri INjogu NMuriithi KNjoroge WLong JHeimerl K(2020)Can Phones Build Relationships?Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/3378393.3402279(219-230)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2020
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