Participation of in and out of-school youth in decision making on use of information communication technology to facilitate implementation of agricultural programmes and markets

Abstract

Youth may not be interested in primary farm production agriculture because of its drudgeries and low remuneration nature but application of ICT in implementation in its various nodes offers them alternative occupation for self-reliance. However, secondary school agriculture curriculum might be inadequate in information communication technology (ICT) that would initiate youth at that early stage to ICT use to facilitate implementation of agricultural programmes and markets. The consequence is low participation of youth out-of-school in decision-making on ICT use to facilitate the implementation. Research was carried out to determine the influence of participation of in and out of school youth in decision-making on use of ICT to facilitate the programmes and markets. The research was done in five farming systems prevalent in Kenya and three categories of secondary schools. Cross-sectional survey design, purposive, stratified and simple random sampling were used to select 160 out-of-school youth and 361 school youth taking agriculture subject. Data was collected using questionnaires and analyzed by qualitative and inferential statistics at probability level 0.05. Results show that out-of-school youth rated their use of ICT to facilitate implementation of the programmes as considerably lower than those in school. Strategy 5 was ranked significantly highest as solution followed by strategy 4. Strategy 5 suggested as solution the establishment of digital infrastructure in rural areas to enable out of school youth who are ICT knowledgeable create platforms and support youth farmers by sharing information. Strategy 4 propose to establish and manage networks for youth agri-preneurs to enable them share experiences for efficiency in agricultural production and marketing as the answer. The rest of the strategies 1, 2 and 3 were also rated as very important thus indicating their potential as solutions. There is a significant positive linear regression correlation (R2 = 0.751; p ? 0.005) between level of participation in decision making on use of ICT by out-of-school youth and level of its application in the operation of agricultural programmes and markets.