Available mobile services and farmers’ needs in rural areas of Madagascar

Mobile phones can provide climatic and economic information that helps farmers improve their decisions and should therefore support rural development. It should serve as a lever for rural development. The issue lies in the mismatch between the mobile services currently available and the needs of farmers. The aim is to assess the extent to which available mobile services meet the needs of farmers. The research question is therefore as follows: what mobile services does the rural population need? The hypothesis suggests that the mobile services currently available meet the needs of farmers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 384 farmers in the Analamanga and Itasy regions, using open-ended questions in Malagasy. The data were processed through Multiple Correspondence Analysis followed by discriminant frequency analysis to confirm the predefined classes. A descriptive analysis was carried out to identify key information from the respondents and the selected mobile services. The classes identified, along with their respective variables, were processed and analysed using benchmarking, ranking and the strategic rectangle. The results showed that voice service (RA-E) is predominant, with a usage rate of 88.3%. It is followed by SMS service (ES-E), used by 62% of respondents, and mobile money (LM-E), with 54.9%. Data service (SDD-I and SDD-T) is the least used, with 17% of users. In addition, three classes of farmers were identified: occasional mobile phone user (40.6%), smartphone user (24.7%) and feature phone user (34.6%).