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Abstract
Access by smallholder farmers to markets has traditionally been constrained by lack of
market information. Yet progress in smallholder agriculture is inconceivable without
greater market participation. The desire to strengthen farmer access to market has thus
resulted in the emergence of many agricultural projects that use Information and
Communication Technologies (ICT) in developing countries over the last decade.
These technologies focus on providing market information services (MIS) to farmers.
This study uses regression techniques and data collected from 379 smallholder farmers
in Kenya to examine the conditioners of awareness and use of ICT-based MIS. The
study finds that transaction costs, the characteristics of the area in which ICT-based
projects are implemented and farmer endowments with human and financial capital
play an important role in smallholder farmers’ awareness, use and/or extent of use of
ICT-based MIS projects. It concludes that awareness and the use of ICT-based MIS is
driven by farmer, farm and location-specific characteristics as well as various capital
endowment factors. The study discusses the implications of these findings for policy
and practice.