Assessment of the Factors Affecting Smallholder Livestock Farmers’ Use of Information and Communication Technologies to Access Market Information in Nasarawa State, Nigeria

The objective of this study was to assess the factors impacting the utilization of information and communication technologies (ICT) by smallholder livestock farmers for accessing market information in Nasarawa State, Nigeria. A multi-stage sampling method was used to select 200 livestock smallholder livestock farmers. The gathered data underwent analysis using descriptive statistics and a logit regression model. The findings revealed that the majority of farmers (76%) were married, and 30% had only primary education. Approximately 39% of respondents were aged between 21 and 30 years, with an average age of 34 years. More than half (86%) of the smallholder livestock farmers had farm sizes between 1.1 and 2.0 hectares, with an average of 1.73 hectares, and 38% had a monthly income ranging from ₦21,000 to ₦40,000. About 32% of the respondents used mobile phones. The results of the logit regression revealed that marital status and the educational level of farmers had a positive and significant relationship (P<0.1) with ICT use. Age, household size, and farm size also had a positive and significant influence (P<0.01) on ICT use, while credit access and income had a positive and significant impact (P<0.05) on ICT use. The primary constraints identified were poverty among the farmers (97.5%) and inadequate capacity and affordability, along with poor access to ICT infrastructure (96.3%), ranking first and second, respectively. The study discovered that ICT use was influenced by the socio-economic factors of the respondents. The study suggested that television and radio be consistently used to disseminate adequate and timely information to smallholder livestock farmers, as these media are easily accessible, affordable, and userfriendly for rural communities.