Digitisation in Agriculture in Tanzania: Farmers’ Knowledge Systems, Digital Tools and Diverging Scripts

Sub-Saharan Africa has emerged as an epicentre for investment and deployment of digital tools primarily targeting small-scale farmers in the name of development. Through an ethnographically informed and qualitative case study of Tanzania, this research project contributes to the literature on digitisation in agriculture by unpacking the nuances of how global and regional trends play out in a country-specific context. Through a methodology that explores the national level digitisation in agriculture landscape, as well as rural farmers’ lived experiences, this project unpacks the fits and misfits between agricultural knowledge systems and those presumed by digital application, as well as the consequences for the utility of digitisation in agriculture in Tanzania. Drawing on script theory, digital tools are understood as active in constructing (intended) users by suggesting, permitting and preventing different courses of action for farmers. In addition, by engaging with conceptualisations of choice, the study engaged with the choices that digitisation in agriculture aims to make for farmers and how farmers mediate these.

I critically examine the relationship between 108 identified digitisation in agriculture tools and the local knowledge systems they seek to enter and improve. Findings suggest a dissonance between the assumed and actual use and impact of digital tools for rural farmers, with mismatches between assumptions scripted into digital tools and farmers' lived realities. In addition, findings demonstrate how rural farming communities have developed innovative informal digitisation in agriculture practices, using (typically basic) mobile phone devices and functions to strengthen established agricultural knowledge networks, practices and situated needs and interests. The study suggests that further research should explore pathways to strengthen farmers' role as innovators, enabling continued farmer-led innovation in digitisation in agriculture. The study further indicates the need for further research to contribute towards agricultural futures that preserve farmers' sovereignty and choice.