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Mobile Money, Agricultural Intensification, and Household Welfare: Panel Evidence from Rural Uganda

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 August 2022

Rayner Tabetando*
Affiliation:
Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, Faculty of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, University of Buea, Buea, Cameroon
Tomoya Matsumoto
Affiliation:
Otaru University of Commerce, Otaru, Hokkaido, Japan
Djomo Choumbou Raoul Fani
Affiliation:
Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, Faculty of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, University of Buea, Buea, Cameroon
*
*Corresponding author. Email: raynertabetando@gmail.com
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Abstract

We examine the impact of the rapidly expanding mobile banking service “mobile money” on rural households’ decision to adopt modern agricultural inputs and its resultant effect on agricultural income using plot, household, and community-level panel data from rural Uganda. The main findings indicate that mobile money adoption increases per capita farm income by 13%. Pathway analyses show that mobile money adoption increases the likelihood of using chemical fertilizer on maize plots by 11 percentage points. Mobile money adoption increases the likelihood of high-yielding maize seeds adoption on maize plots by 8.2 percentage points. In the Ugandan context of rapid decline in soil fertility and very low adoption of fertilizer and modern seeds, mobile money provides an avenue to finance agricultural intensification.

Information

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Southern Agricultural Economics Association
Figure 0

Table 1. Summary statistics (mean) by year and mobile money adoption status

Figure 1

Table 2. Determinants of mobile money adoption (first-stage instrumental variable estimation)

Figure 2

Table 3. Mobile money, farm, and nonfarm income (main estimation)

Figure 3

Table 4. Impact of Mobile Money on Chemical fertilizer and Improved Seeds adoption

Figure 4

Table 5. Mobile money, farm, and nonfarm income (robustness check)

Figure 5

Table A1. Mobile money and disaggregated farm income

Figure 6

Table A2. Impact of mobile money on chemical fertilizer, hired labor, and improved seeds adoption