Mobile Phone Technologies, Agricultural Production Patterns, and Market access in Uganda

Haruna Sekabira and Matin Qaim

No 246310, 2016 Fifth International Conference, September 23-26, 2016, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from African Association of Agricultural Economists (AAAE)

Abstract: Through various applications, the importance of mobile technologies has been more evident in developing economies since the late 1990s. One such application has been mobile money services, where mobile network subscribers transfer money electronically via a mobile phone, thus eliminating some of the developing countries’ persistent barriers to financial services for instance financial market exclusion and remoteness. Despite mobile technologies’ anticipated potential towards rural socio-economic development, there is however yet a very limited empirical focus on their welfare impacts. Using regression models and a panel data of 874 observations collected from predominantly coffee farmers in central Uganda, we argue that mobile money use has a positive impact on several income-enhancing mechanisms along the income pathway to smallholder household welfare. Compared to non-users, rural households using mobile money sell more of their coffee produce in a high-value form as shelled beans, receive higher prices for these shelled beans, and earn more off-farm income, with or without remittances. All these mechanisms enhance incomes, thus welfare.

Keywords: Marketing; Production Economics; Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22
Date: 2016-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev, nep-mfd and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/246310/files/6 ... e%20technologies.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaae16:246310

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.246310

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2016 Fifth International Conference, September 23-26, 2016, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from African Association of Agricultural Economists (AAAE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().