Mobile Phones and Farmers' Marketing Decisions in Ethiopia. (April 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Tadesse, Getaw; Bahiigwa, Godfrey
• Is Part Of: World development. Volume 68(2015)
• Page Start: 296
• Page End: 307
• Publication Date: 2015-04
• Subjects: mobile phones -- information searching -- agricultural marketing -- smallholder farmers -- Ethiopia; Economic history -- 1990- -- Periodicals; Economic assistance -- Developing countries -- Periodicals; 330.9
• DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2014.12.010
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0305-750X

Abstract

Highlights: Mobile phone ownership positively related to wealth, education, and electricity. Mobile phone ownership has very little effect on spatial and temporal arbitrage. Mobile phone increases the quantity of output supplied to the market. Of the seven crops, farmers with mobile phone receive higher price only for wheat. Lack of information source seems an important explanation for the weak impact. Summary: This paper examines the impact of mobile phones on farmers' marketing decisions and prices they receive based on household- and village-level information collected from rural Ethiopia. It explains the reason for the weak impact of mobile phones observed in this study as well as in previous studies in Africa. We argue that even though many farmers participate in information searching, the number of farmers who use mobile phones for information searching is very small. The reason for such low use of mobile phones for information searching seems to be lack of relevant information that can be accessed through mobile phones.