C. Steinfield, Susan Wyche, Tian Cai, Hastings Chiwasa
{"title":"The mobile divide revisited: mobile phone use by smallholder farmers in Malawi","authors":"C. Steinfield, Susan Wyche, Tian Cai, Hastings Chiwasa","doi":"10.1145/2737856.2738022","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"A survey of 191 randomly selected rural farm households in central Malawi was completed to provide a better estimate of mobile phone access in a country that falls at the lower end of published mobile subscription rates. We further ask whether there remains evidence of a mobile divide, across both socio-economic status and gender, in such a context. Detailed analyses of mobile phone ownership, usage practices, and the sources that phone and non-phone owners use for farming-relevant information highlight problems with the current over-reliance on mobile phones as a primary conduit for agricultural information and services.","PeriodicalId":210700,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2015-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"18","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1145/2737856.2738022","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 18
Abstract
A survey of 191 randomly selected rural farm households in central Malawi was completed to provide a better estimate of mobile phone access in a country that falls at the lower end of published mobile subscription rates. We further ask whether there remains evidence of a mobile divide, across both socio-economic status and gender, in such a context. Detailed analyses of mobile phone ownership, usage practices, and the sources that phone and non-phone owners use for farming-relevant information highlight problems with the current over-reliance on mobile phones as a primary conduit for agricultural information and services.