# Information and Communication Technologies and Agricultural Production: New Evidence from Africa
## 2 Review of Empirical Literature
[60], which specifically focused on the effect of internet on agricultural sector performance and used panel data of 126 countries, including 32 countries from Africa, covering a period of eight years (2012-2019), showed that internet users, fixed broadband subscriptions, and secure internet servers have a significant and positive effect on agricultural sector performance. However, further heterogeneity analysis by [PERSON] et al. [60]showed that this effect only pertains to countries from Africa, Asia, and Oceania, as well as economies classified as emerging and developing. In Africa, where agriculture is dominated by smallholder farmers, much of the micro-level empirical evidence on the effect of information and communication technologies on agricultural production has centered on smallholder farming. For example, based on data from 200 smallholder farmers in Northern Nigeria, [PERSON] et al. [62] found that short message services (SMS text reminders) to the farmers had a positive and significant effect on the agricultural productivity of the farmers. Similarly, [PERSON] et al. [61] examined the relationship between mobile phone use and agricultural yield using data from 179 farmers in four rural communities in Tanzania. Their results showed a positive association between mobile phone use for agricultural activities and reported maize yields, with many of the farmers also reporting increases in agricultural profits. A previous study by [PERSON] et al. [64], which used an extended version of the technology acceptance model and with data from 300 dairy farmers in Uganda analyzed using structural equation modeling, however, showed that the use of mobile phones by farmers is mainly limited to normal communication and that perceived ease of use of mobile phones is important for mobile phone adoption among the farmers studied. While some of the empirical micro-level evidence point to the important effect of information and communication technologies, particularly mobile phones or mobile-phone-based technology, on agricultural production, others have focused on what farmers with mobile phones use them for in agricultural production activities [63; 65; 70]. [PERSON] et al. [70], for example, studied 131 farmers in Marondera district of Mashonaland East province in Zimbabwe and showed that they use their mobile phones for accessing advisory services, accessing market information on inputs and produce, weather data, and for mobile phone money transfers for transaction and crop insurance. [PERSON] et al. [70] argued that, through the use of mobile phones, the farmers were able to make informed decisions and saved time and transport cost. [PERSON] [65] investigated how farmers have applied mobile phone technology with data from 328 smallholder farmers in Cross River State of Nigeria. The main findings by [PERSON] [65] indicated that mobile phone use was most common among younger farmers with at least secondary education who mainly use mobile phones for seeking market information. Mainly focusing on the youth, [PERSON] et al. [63] explored ICT application in agriculture in Kenya and described various ICT-enabled avenues, including social media handles, voice messages, and SMS, used by the youth to obtain production technologies, sharing production information, and money transactions. Outside of Africa, and particularly in other developing contexts, evidence on the effect of ICT on agriculture through micro studies has begun to emerge. [PERSON] et al. [71] evaluated the impact of mobile phone and internet usage on the selection of sales productivity and marketing channels among 580 wheat growers from four districts in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province (KPK) of Pakistan. By applying propensity score matching and [PERSON]'s two-step regression techniques, [PERSON] et al. [71] found that mobile phone and internet usage significantly improved the efficiency of selecting sales channels, increasing agricultural profits and, consequently, positively affecting rural farmers' income. Similarly, an earlier study by [PERSON] et al.