Farmers’ characteristics and use of mobile services in rural areas

The rate of adoption, use, and impact of mobile telephony varies over time and across space. The issue concerns farmers’ limited ability to fully benefit from mobile services. The aim of this research is to identify the characteristics of farmers and their impact on the performance of mobile services. This leads to the research question: what roles do the capabilities of the target group play in mobile usage? The hypothesis suggests that farmers’ intellectual, financial, and technical capacities are assets for the use of mobile services in rural areas. Conducted in  Analamanga and Itasy regions of Madagascar, the study examines farmers’ socio-economic capacities as well as their adoption and use of mobile services. Data were collected in late 2024 through semi-structured interviews with 384 farmers using open-ended questions. The qualitative responses were coded before being processed through multiple correspondence analysis and discriminant factor analysis. Radar benchmarking graphs were then used to compare each individual’s socio-economic factors with the maximum values of selected variables. The strategic rectangle identified six dominant and influential variables: ability to use mobile money services, use of SMS services, ability to make a call, inability to use mobile money services, inability to make a call, and limited French-language ability. The prospective study evaluates the evolution of mobile users’ capabilities over a 10-year period. The findings show that rural mobile telephony depends not only on infrastructure but also on functional, cognitive, and linguistic capacities.