Assessment of E-Readiness Challenges of Farmers and Extension Workers in North-East Nigeria

Introduction

Globalization has carried a unique prominence on knowledge innovation and transfer as the crucial driver of economic development and competitiveness with information technologies playing an ever-escalating role. The catalyst for the kind of knowledge innovations and transfer is only the Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs). It has, therefore, become imperative for countries to introduce advances in information technology (IT) to influence the organization and the success of all sectors of the economy as well as agriculture. The strategic application and administration of information technology confidently yield enormous benefits to all stakeholders of the government. Even though only five African countries had Internet connectivity in the year 1996, by 2001, all the nations in Africa had logged on to the Internet. During the first decade of the 21^st century, Internet access in Africa has further increased (Hellsten, 2010), and as per the International Telecommunications Union (2019), Africa the second largest continent after Asia by size and population has 28.2 percent of the Internet accessibility. The kind of extensive expansion of information technology enhances the scope to avail of the benefits for all sectors comprising agriculture and its allied businesses. The situation of this kind raises the question of whether agriculture and its allied businesses are ready to invite the benefits of information technology or not? The reason is that most of the farmers and extension workers are illiterates and doing farming and other related activities by using traditional practices without the support of any type of technology. The existing sorry state of affairs in the agriculture and its businesses triggers the idea to the authors to study the e-readiness of the farmers and extension workers in north-east Nigeria. Notably, farmers and agriculture are the backbones to most of the developing and underdeveloped economies where most of the people are engaged in producing a variety of Agri-based products.

Agribusiness is the business of agricultural production. The term is a portmanteau of agriculture and business and is widely believed to have been coined in 1957 by John Davis and Ray Goldberg (Davis & Goldberg, 1957). The agribusiness comprises crop production, distribution, agrichemicals, breeding, farm machinery, processing, and seed supply along with marketing of all varieties of agri-based products. Agribusiness includes a broad range of activities and processes involved in the production, processing, marketing, and distribution of food products (Molla, Peszynski, & Pittayachawan, 2010). Extension workers play a critical role as information intermediary in the agricultural information services chain between the various governmental, non-governmental agencies, and the farmers (Mavhunduse & Holmner, 2019). Extension workers are individuals who are working with small farmers to improve farm productivity from initial sowing to get the maximum yields of the crops. The extension is the two-way method of transmitting information, knowledge, or skills that can help persons, families, neighborhoods, companies, or industries attain enhanced economic, social, and environmental outcomes and establish constructive transformation. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) include all products that can store, retrieve, manipulate, transmit, and receive information in digital form (Alabi, 2016; Das, 2018). UNESCO comprehensively defined the term ICT as types of technology that are applied to spread, progression, accumulate, generate, exhibit, distribute, or swap information by electronic means by using radio, TV, video, DVD, telecom satellite systems, and computer software and hardware along with the apparatus and services linked with the above technologies viz., video conferencing, emails, and blogs, etc. (UNESCO, 2007). ICT, as defined in the Information & Communication Technology Sector Strategy Paper of the World Bank Group consists of hardware, software, networks, and media for collection, storage, processing, transmission, and presentation of information (voice, data, text, images) (World Bank, 2003). In a nutshell, ICT means “dispensation and passing of information in a scientific manner”, which covers lengthy above-mentioned activities (World Bank, 2011). The term e-readiness is defined by Jukic et al. (2009) in a more comprehensive manner as the maturity of citizens, businesses, NGOs and governments for participating in the electronic world (e-commerce, e-government etc.) Hellsten (2010) defined e-readiness as a country’s capacity and ability to provide services through the Internet.