Reported by Al Jazeera
Poor training and delayed responses leave farmers struggling to access useful market information.
Dodoma region, Tanzania – Theresia Abel Nyoka has received messages on her phone about M-Kilimo and e-Kilimo, digital services designed to help farmers, but she has never registered for either.
“It is simply because we have not been given education. I do not know their importance or benefits,” she told Al Jazeera by phone from Paranga village in central Tanzania’s Dodoma region.
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M-Kilimo, a Ministry of Agriculture mobile service, provides market information and farming advice, allows farmers to advertise produce and enables them to ask agricultural extension workers for help. The broader e-Kilimo platform brings government agricultural services together through a website and smartphone app.
Nyoka instead relies on a system she understands. She takes her produce to a warehouse operated through her Agricultural Marketing Cooperative Society (AMCOS), where farmers pool crops for sale at organised auctions during the marketing season.
Jeremiah Luwe, 49, a maize and pigeon pea farmer from Ngomai village in Kongwa district, has tried using M-Kilimo on his smartphone. But he says responses to questions about markets and agricultural inputs can take up to two weeks.
“Sometimes the information arrives too late to be useful. The government should provide a faster system that responds on time and connects us to markets and other farmers,” he told Al Jazeera.
Luwe continues to rely on public meetings, auctions and media reports for market information.
Their experiences highlight a challenge for Tanzania’s digital agriculture initiatives: Making services available does not guarantee that farmers know how to use them or receive information when they need it.
The government is investing in the sector through the $3.62m Data for Digital Agricultural Transformation Joint Programme, which runs from September 2024 to August 2027. The programme aims to strengthen agricultural data systems and expand access to digital services, with targets of improving digital literacy for 500,000 farmers and training 500 government extension workers.
The Ministry of Agriculture did not respond to requests for comment on farmers’ concerns about training and the performance of M-Kilimo and e-Kilimo.
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