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Abstract:
Agriculture is the backbone of the Tanzanian economy and it constantly experiences with advances in technology. Because of the rapid development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the world, each Country or person has to concern their products and services more towards modernized ICT related manner. However, the status of ICT adoption in Tanzania is still backward, especially in agriculture and rural areas. Progress is slow and hence creating risk of a growing gap compared to other developing countries. Despite the fact that efforts for ICT development are in place, the adoption of ICT applications in agriculture in rural areas is still very poor. The aim of the present research is to investigate challenges facing adoption of ICT applications in rural Tanzania. Primary data was collected by the use of questionnaire and interviews later the given data were analysed by the use of Microsoft Excel and SPSS. Findings reveal that adoption of ICT in agriculture in rural areas of Gairo is generally not promising as Majorities are more familiar with the mobile phone usage only compared to other form of ICT. The results were largely in agreement with those obtained in other areas study were they reported cost, no government support, insufficient and no ICT policy enforcement, poor infrastructure, lack of knowledge, lack of information about ICT for agriculture, internet, poverty of rural people and people resistance to change. Unlike other countries, In Tanzania Lack of knowledge about ICT, lack of ICT tools and expertise, lack of government support reported higher impact on adoption of ICT in agriculture sector. In addition to this, new challenges were revealed to hinder adoption of ICT in agriculture in rural areas of Tanzania which were lack of electricity and lack of understanding of English language. Security and lack of trust were found to be challenges in other researches in literature review, but neither was found to be significant from the Tanzania results. Lastly the study recommends for the Government and other important players to increase effort in promoting and improving adoption of ICT activities in agricultural. Respondents suggested different measures to be taken including having ICT policies, improve ICT infrastructure and provide electricity and ICT tools in all rural areas of Tanzania.
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