| dc.description.abstract | Agriculture plays a pivotal role in Uganda’s economy, employing more than 70% of the workforce and contributing significantly to the country's GDP and export earnings. However, the agricultural sector faces numerous challenges, including pests, climate change, limited access to resources, corruption, and inefficient extension services. Women, who make up over 50% of the agricultural workforce, face disparities in access to resources and opportunities, impacting and overall economic development. To address the gender gap and improve agricultural productivity, a non-governmental organization called Field of Hope (FOH), in collaboration with Her Mighty Hands (HMH), piloted a smartphone-based agricultural extension video training program targeting women farmers in Kwania district in 2022. However, there is lack of empirical evidence on effectiveness of using agricultural training videos recorded in the local language for extension among smallholder farmers. Previous studies in Uganda focused on learning centers rather than smartphones. The study therefore aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of video-mediated extension for smallholder women maize farmers in Ayabi Sub-county, Kwania district. Specifically, the study examined the extent to which use of smartphone-based videos lead to increase in agricultural knowledge retention, its effect on adoption and use of good agronomic practices and extent to which it leads to increased production yields of maize. The theory of change for this research assumed that smartphone-based training videos can effectively improve agricultural knowledge retention, leading to the adoption of good agronomic practices and increased production yields among smallholder maize farmers. Data were collected from smallholder women farmers who received smartphone-based training (15), in-person (15), and a control group (30) and these were analyzed using descriptive statistics, paired and independent t-test, chi-square tests, Tukey’s post-hoc test and ANOVA tests. The results showed that use of smartphone-based videos by women maize farmers significantly increased knowledge retention as evidenced by their familiarity, competency, and perceived importance of agricultural practices. It also led to a higher adoption rate of Good Agronomic Practices, with 80% adoption rate compared to 53.3% for in-person training recipients while agricultural productivity was also significantly higher (11 bags per acre) compared to in-person training (6 bags per acre) and control group (4.5 bags per acre) (p < 0.05). Based on these findings, it is recommended that similar projects be expanded to reach more farmers in rural areas, with a focus on providing smartphones and training in the local language. Additionally, addressing the limitations of power supply and phone security should be considered to maximize the impact of such programs. | en_US |
