23 pages., Online via open access., How is bilateral development cooperation communicated about in the news? How does a donor agency communicate for and about development? And what are the links between one and the other? This article focuses on a 2016 expose reported on Swedish public television about alleged corruption in aid to Zambia, reflecting failure of both donor and recipient. Authors focus on the news media as mediator of the donor's communication with its tax-paying audiences and demonstrated potentials of an integrated conceptual approach to communication for and about development. Findings reveal greater media coverage of financial accountability than on doing good for Zambian citizens.
International: Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation, ACP-EU, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 153 Document Number: D11614
Notes:
3 pages., Online from publisher., Author addresses "large gap between African extension services ... and the number of farmers being reached." ... "Africa's existing mobile network (currently the second biggest mobile market in the world) could be better utilised to bridge this gap and provide mobile-based agricultural information, advice and support to smallholder farmers."
4 pages., Online from publisher., "For the first time, a landmark report on digitalisation for agriculture (D4Ag) in Africa compiles and highlights data on digital solutions that are enabling the transformation of African agriculture."
1 page., Online from publisher., Editorial discusses the launching in early 2019 of a report about digitalisation of African agriculture and introduces related articles in this special issue of the Spore periodical.
21 pgs., CTs (Communications technologies) have revolutionized agricultural information services at every level in the agricultural sector, thus impacting rural development and catalysing poverty alleviation strategies. This has largely been the case with small-scale farmers in rural areas in developing countries where mobile technologies have penetrated more than most other ICT tools. However, in some of the farming environments, mobile phone use is largely driven by agricultural extension workers. This paper seeks to examine the way mobile phones are used for information access in situations where agricultural extension workers are a critical intermediary in the agricultural information services. Interviews were conducted with 10 randomly selected farmers who were part of the Dzindi irrigation scheme. The findings were that from the variety of information available to the farmers the most important source was the extension officer. The extension officer and the radio were indicated to be the most reliable independent sources of information. The other sources, such as the radio, family members, and friends, suppliers of chemicals, books and magazines, were only considered reliable if the information could be verified or vouched for by the extension officer. Increasing the information handling skills of extension officers, training of farmers to use smart features of their phones and promoting the usual face-to-face communication use of conventional methods, which is what usually gives rise to the mediation of mobile phones, were recommended.
