| dc.description.abstract | Information access in rural communities of Tanzania is very important as it keeps its members aware of
what happened and what happening in the world. This importance can not be undermined since it
helps farmers and other members of the rural community to make the right decision about their
activities. Rural community areas are surrounded by many factors which in one way or another
influence or hinder accessibility of information. Several works have been done on analysis of these
factors; however most of them were conducted a number of years back. This study focused on
providing the current survey on analysis of these factors. Specifically, the study analysed the following
factors: source of power, penetration of mobile phones, subscription to networks, languages used and
level of education, policy, government support, government administration and farming system.
Mwanga District was used as a study area where descriptive research design was applied. Primary data
were collected from farmers by using questionnaires while secondary data were collected from village
reports and other research reports. The collected data were analysed by using Statistical Package for
Social Science (SPSS). Findings show that in rural areas, there are unreliable source of power, higher
penetrations of feature phones, high subscription to Vodacom network and high uses of Swahili
language for communication, good government support and policy which favour farmer’s development.
Generally, we recommend that the existing sources of information like information systems and other
applications should be integrated to form one stop centre where all information can be accessed. | en_US |
