Impact of gender and cooperative membership on farmer's use of information communication technologies in Abuja, Nigeria

The importance of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) in sustainable agricultural development cannot be overemphasized hence the study examined the impact of gender and cooperative membership on farmer's use of ICTs in Abuja, Nigeria. Emphasis was laid on common ICTs like radio, television, GSM phone video, agricultural books, camera and computer. A multi-stage technique was adopted for sampling while questionnaires were used for data collection. A total of 212 farmers made up of 53 male cooperative farmers, 53 female cooperative farmers, 53 male non-cooperative and 53 female non-cooperative farmers were interviewed. Data were analyzed using a three-way mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA). Results showed that, irrespective of cooperative membership, there was no significant difference (p > .05) in gender use of GSM phones, television, video, camera and computer but they significantly differed (p < .05) in the use of radio and agricultural books. The male farmers significantly used radio more than the female farmers while the reverse was the case for agricultural books. On the other hand, irrespective of gender, there was no significant difference (p > .05) in cooperative and non-cooperative farmer's use of each of the ICTs. Again, there was significant interaction of gender and cooperative membership on farmer's use of each of the ICTs implying that farmers (male or female) who belonged to cooperative societies significantly used some of the ICTs more than the non-cooperative farmers. Generally, of all the ICTs, GSM phones were the most utilized while computer was the least. The paper concluded that gender and cooperative membership, individually and jointly, impact on farmer's use of ICTs in agriculture.