Abstract

This study investigated the determinants of factors affecting the use of ICTS among urban and rural farmers in Abia State. The State has 3 agricultural zones namely Aba, Umuahia and Ohafia. In each of the agricultural zones, 1 Local Government Area was chosen. From these LGAs, one urban area and one rural community also were randomly selected. For Aba Zone, Aba urban and Mgboko-amiri community, Umuahia zone, Umuahia urban and Umudike and for Ohafia zone, Ohafia urban and Akanu-ukwu community. Multi-stage sampling procedure was used in determining the sample size. From each town and community, 30 respondents were purposively selected, making the sample size to be 180 respondents. Data were collected through well structured questionnaire to obtain detailed information from the respondents on factors affecting the use of ICTs among them, and subsequently analyzed with both simple descriptive and inferential statistics like frequency distribution and Probit regression model. The research findings indicated that majority of the respondents were between the age of 31 45 years of age with (57%) of the respondents being female and (43%) being male. About 41% of the respondents had no formal education while 59% had various levels of educational qualification. Respondents access to ICTs, shows that about 20% of the urban farmers had access to television while 18% of the rural farmers had access to television (communication centre), for radio 21% for urban and 36% for rural farmers. About 19.0% of the urban and 3% of the rural farmers had access to GSM. On major factors affecting the use of ICTs about 17.0% of the urban respondents and 14.5% of the rural complained about mobility, followed by poor power supply, 19.3% for urban while 16.3% for rural farmers and lastly 14.7% of the urban farmers and 16.3% of the rural complained about lack of access to internet facilities. On determinants of the use of ICTs, using probit regression, the results indicated that education, income, sex and technical skill was positive and significantly related to use of ICT (Y) at 1% level, while cosmopoliteness, permission and time was negative but significantly related to T at 1% level. Based on these findings, the paper recommends that proper empowerment of the farmers becomes necessary as this will help to reduce the barriers that limits the utilization of ICTs.

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