Paper short abstract:

This study examines the adoption and usability of a user-driven ICT user-interface for co-producing weather information in a real-life experiment with smallholder farming communities in Ghana.

Paper long abstract:

The production and delivery of weather information for farming is often characterised by formal scientific sector and poor design of information and the ICT. This has affected the usability of weather information to support decision-making in farming. This study examined a user-driven approach under a polycentric management to design user-interface for co-producing weather information with local weather indicators in a real-life experiment in rainfed farming communities in Ghana. We linked theories of polycentric institutions to the citizen science concept to design innovative participatory framework. Data for the study was generated through 21 semi-structured interviews with farmers, agricultural extension agents, NGOs, lead farmers, and 5 focus group discussions with different farmer based organisations. Several workshops were held to make design choices about local weather indicators, the ICT and user-interface.

Findings from the study indicates that the use of smart mobile phones has several potentials to help disseminate agricultural information to farmers. Yet, there were varied levels of adoption and use among farmers as some farmers were not conversant with the use of smart mobile phones. The involvement of all actors ensure that some value was added to existing knowledge, user-interface, and varying levels of interactions among farmers and expert. The usability of ICT tool depended on the design of an appropriate user-interface, farmers' language, context, culture of risk averse, availability of internet and electricity supply. This study has several implications on adoption of ICT among smallholder farmers, social learning, and the linkages between different knowledge systems.