Mobile Phones and Rural Livelihoods in Kenya

This book addresses the effects of mobile phone on rural livelihoods, challenges of using mobile phone to provide agricultural and rural development information, the context of mobile phone use and its effect on smallholder farmers’ livelihood and the level and dimension of mobile phone use and its effects on rural livelihood in Kenya.The book argues that the effect of mobile phones on rural livelihood is not equal and uniform and depend on its context, level and dimension of use and that mobile phone improved market-oriented farmers’ livelihood by increasing their income or reducing losses but does not affect smallholder subsistence farmers’ directly. The book concludes that in rural areas mobile phones are used at the basic level which limits the type of information that they offer due to lack of awareness and training, subsistence farming system, inadequate infrastructure and weak M4D institutional policies and regulations. The book recommends that subsistence farmers be empowered to transit to market-oriented farming and that non-governmental institutions create polices and regulations that would enable mainstreaming mobile phones into core rural livelihood activities.