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Innovation is important in agricultural development, particularly in the face of environmental and economic challenges. Therefore, recent thinking has been on agricultural innovation systems, with emphasis on interactions between multiple actors; so communication is central to the systems. Communication landscape has changed radically in rural areas of Nigeria and other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in the past thirteen years through use of mobile technology. This research examines the role of mobile phones in agricultural innovation in Nigeria. Workshops, semi-structured interviews, survey and focus group discussions were used to collect data from 263 respondents from different actors within the agricultural sector in Kano State. The results indicate there are informal innovations in the area in addition to formal innovations introduced to the farmers; they are capable of developing innovations to satisfy their ecological and economic needs. There are variations in the use and adaptation of the innovations (formal and informal) across the localities, which show diversification of agricultural innovations and practices. Agricultural innovation also entails new forms of organisation and new forms of interaction, which fits into the role of mobile phones in changing marketing structure and processes, in addition to changing extension and farmers' ways of facilitating access and use of information. Mobile phones improve grains marketing considerably by increasing contact among farmers and grain traders. Market efficiency is achieved through enhancing exchange of goods and services in addition to increase in income generation and number of customers. There are significant differences in the information exchange between farmers that are beneficiaries of National Agricultural Questions and Answers Services (NAQAS) project and those that are not beneficiaries, mainly due to free services the beneficiaries are enjoying. The project needs to be expanded to cover more farming communities for facilitating information exchange among farmers and other agricultural stakeholders. Promoting grass root innovation is helpful in enabling farmers to meet their environmental and economic needs. In general, various innovation processes ranging from introducing, promoting and adapting formal and informal innovations to changing marketing structure and processes, as well as changing farmers' and extension agents' roles are enhanced through an overwhelming increase in access and use of mobile phones in Kano State, Nigeria. |
