Real Mobiles: Kenyan and Zambian Smallholder Farmers’ Current Attitudes Towards Mobile Phones Susan P. Wyche Melissa Densmore Brian Samuel Geyer Michigan State University University of Cape Town Michigan State University Department of Media and Information Department of Computer Science Department of Anthropology East Lansing, MI, United States Cape Town, South Africa East Lansing, MI, United States
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT design of mobile phones? There is value in deepening the What are rural farmers in sub-Saharan Africa’s current attitudes community’s understanding of farmers’ mobile phone use towards their mobile phones? We draw from qualitative studies of patterns, so that scholars, practitioners and funding agencies can smallholder farmers in Kenya and Zambia to answer this question. better anticipate how phone-based technologies will be adopted or A review of ongoing efforts to develop mobile phone services for ignored. farmers paired with critiques of the “colonial impulse” embedded This paper provides that understanding. We studied mobile in future-oriented visions of technology use guided our study. Our phones, and their use and non-use, among nearly 200 farmers findings suggest there is a mismatch between the design of mobile living in rural Kenya and Zambia. The qualitative case studies, phone applications and our participants’ perceptions and usage of covering two regions in each country, highlight similarities and their devices. We also discovered several understudied barriers some differences among smallholder farmers’ and their mobile that hinder adoption of mobile services: the influx of counterfeit phone usage practices. Our findings suggest that mobile phones and substandard mobile phones, distrust of the content being are reaching everyone, but are not perceived as tools that support delivered via SMS and reservations about the spiritual and health farming.