Abstract
Climate adaptation is very important in reducing risks to agricultural systems. Rwanda has developed a system to monitor and provide information of weather and climate to citizens and decision makers, but smallholder farmers have shown that they do not receive enough information and services that help them to take appropriate decisions in their agricultural activities. One approach to enhance resilience among the smallholder farmers is to provide them with timely, accurate and reliable climate information services through effective communication channels. This study investigated, among others, the Climate Information and Services (CIS) communication channels accessed by the smallholder farmers in Ruhango district of Rwanda; the farmers’ social-economic characteristics which influence the accessibility of those channels and the factors inhibiting the use of the available climate information services effectively in decision-making. A total of one hundred and fifty-nine (159) smallholder farmers were interviewed by using the Survey CTO computer software application installed in Tablets. All collected data were analyzed using SPSS for all objectives. The radio was found to be the main CIS channel used by the majority of respondents followed by mobile phone. Family size was only the socio-economic characteristic established to be statistically significant in influencing the accessibility to communication channels. Among the smallholder farmers that accessed CIS, only 11.9% used it. The majority (88.1%) of smallholder farmers who did not use the CIS said it is due from “lack of trust based on untimely and unreliable climate information received in previous years.”
Presenters
Alexis NzeyimanaStudent, Master of Science, MLA College with University of Plymouth, United Kingdom
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
Human Impacts and Responsibility
KEYWORDS
CLIMATE CHANGE, RESILIENCE, WEATHER INFORMATION, CLIMATE SERVICES
