State of Agricultural E-Government Services to Farmers in Tanzania: Toward the Participatory Design of a Farmers Digital Information System (FDIS)

Gilbert Exaud Mushi (), Pierre-Yves Burgi and Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo
Additional contact information
Gilbert Exaud Mushi: Centre Universitaire D’Informatique (CUI), University of Geneva, 1227 Geneva, Switzerland
Pierre-Yves Burgi: Division Sytéme et Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication, University of Geneva, 1205 Geneva, Switzerland
Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo: Centre Universitaire D’Informatique (CUI), University of Geneva, 1227 Geneva, Switzerland

Agriculture, 2024, vol. 14, issue 3, 1-14

Abstract: The projected population increase and drastic climate changes are a great setback to food security through sustainable agriculture. However, governments need to play key roles in supporting the agriculture sector, which creates considerable employment and contributions to most countries’ Gross Domestic Product (GDP) outcomes. In many countries, the governments already support the agriculture sector with services based on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to reach many stakeholders, including smallholder farmers. This paper investigated the status of e-Government services in the agriculture sector for farmers in order to understand the functions and scope of e-services, the challenges faced by farmers, both addressed and unaddressed, and the challenges of ICT-based services for farmers and other stakeholders in Tanzania. We used a qualitative research approach to interview the Ministry of Agriculture, farmers, extension workers, and agriculture processing industries. The main finding reveals that e-government services play a major role in the agriculture sector in Tanzania. Our results show that the pre-existing ICT services identified for farmers cannot meet the needs of farmers in a complete farming cycle. Moreover, lack of awareness, digital illiteracy, and poor infrastructure are the major challenges faced by farmers and other stakeholders when it comes to ICT-based services. These results justify the need for a comprehensive digital platform, particularly the proposed Farmers Digital Information System (FDIS) to enable farmers and other stakeholders to access essential services in a complete farming cycle for a more sustainable agriculture.

Keywords: agriculture; e-Government services; ICT services; sustainable agriculture; Farmers Digital Information System (FDIS); Tanzania (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/14/3/475/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/14/3/475/ (text/html)

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:gam:jagris:v:14:y:2024:i:3:p:475-:d:1357843

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().