The Nature of Digital Extension Services in the Developing World

Abstract: The rapid diffusion of mobile phones and the internet in Kenya is hoped to be an effective solution to meeting the crucial information needs of smallholder farmers to improve their economic and environmental resilience. This thesis conducts a case study based on interviews with actors who provide digital agricultural extension services to farmers in Kenya to assess the Agricultural Innovation System (AIS), and its features and current trajectory. It finds that the sector constitutes the stagnation phase of an opportunity-driven trajectory. Vital to the AIS is the role of international donors and NGOs, who have fueled the rapid growth of digital extension services leading to a heavily saturated and fragmented sector, whereby collaboration mirrors the cyclical and short-term nature of donor funding and NGO projects. Networks amongst Kenyan actors are rarely sustained without international involvement, and the emphasis on funding towards a social impact, however important, has neglected the financial sustainability of the services. The building of trust across actors, and especially smallholder farmers, is hampered as the high turnover in the sector leads to fatigue due to the constant registration required to utilize services and a growing digital confusion resulting from the superfluous number of digital services and the lack of coordination between them. The public sector was found to be passively supportive in terms of the underlying ICT infrastructure in Kenya but not well-aligned with the needs of the private sector and the digital extension services themselves due to a pervading lack of trust between both sectors. Digitalization was found to also provide creative opportunities for interaction with smallholder farmers to improve inclusivity in the sector, yet in-person interaction is still viewed as vital in this regard. Conventional roles occupied within the agricultural value chain, such as intermediaries and extension officers, were not transformed by digitalization as has been posited, rather the tasks associated with their roles have been redefined rather than replaced.