Purpose This paper to examine the relationship between performance expectancy and behavioural intention to use mobile-based communication technologies for agricultural market information dissemination in Uganda. Design/methodology/approach A descriptive field survey method was adopted. A total of 302 commercial farmers and agribusiness traders in Eastern Uganda participated in the study from whom data were collected using self-administered questionnaires. Descriptive statistics, factor analysis, correlation and regression analyses were used in the study. Findings The findings reveal a significant positive relationship between performance expectancy and behavioural intentions to use mobile-based communication technologies for agricultural information access and dissemination. This implies that, commercial farmers’ behavioural intentions to use mobile-based communication technologies for agricultural market information dissemination and access will be influenced if they anticipate mobile-based communication technologies to offer greater performance in their daily transactions. Research limitations/implications This study was conducted in the context of resource constrained countries particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, however reflecting knowledge from other contexts. The study was conducted with a structured questionnaire being the main data collection tool, and this limited the study from collecting views outside the questions asked in the questionnaire. The variables studied could not be analysed for a long time, given that the study was cross-sectional in nature. Practical implications The study provides recommendations on how to further boost farmers’ behavioural intentions to use mobile-based communication technologies for agricultural information dissemination. Policy makers need to ensure that policies are put in place that encourage third party software developers and telecommunication companies to provide software products and solutions that are beneficial to the commercial farmers and can enable them complete their agricultural transactions in time. Social implications The study provides critical literature on the influence of performance expectancy on commercial farmers’ behavioural intentions to use mobile-based communication technologies for agricultural market information access and dissemination in resource constrained settings. Originality/value It is noted that farmers in Uganda are slowly progressing to newer mobile information and communication technology tools for market information access and dissemination; however, little is known as to why there is slow adoption of these mobile technologies for agricultural purposes; yet policy makers need to come up with proper strategies to encourage wide scale use of mobile technologies for agricultural market purposes.

Organizations in developed countries such as the United States of America and Canada face difficulties and challenges in technology transfer from one organization to another; the complexity of problems easily compounds when such transfers are attempted from developed to developing countries due to differing socioeconomic and cultural environments. There is a gap in the formation of research and education programs to address technology transfer issues that go beyond just transferring the technologies to sustaining such transfers for longer periods. This study examined telemedicine transfer challenges in three Sub-Sahara African countries and developed a framework for sustainable implementation of e-medicine. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were used. The study findings indicate that e-medicine sustainability in Sub-Saharan Africa is affected by institutional factors such as institutional environment and knowledge management practices; technical factors such as the technological environment and technology transfer project environment; social environmental factors such as social environment and donor involvement. These factors were used to model the proposed framework.

Purpose – Requirements engineering (RE) and process improvement has been identified as one of the key factors for improving software quality. Despite this, little scholarly work has been done on developing ways to improve the RE process. The situation of RE and process improvement is even worse in small and medium enterprises that produce software. Consequently, the quality of software being produced by these companies has kept deteriorating. The purpose of this paper is to design a framework that will help small and medium software companies improve their RE processes in order to compete favorably with larger software companies, more especially in terms of software quality. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative research approach was adapted. Four software companies in Uganda were purposively selected to participate in the study. Data were collected using questionnaires. The requirements for designing the framework were gathered and refined from both primary and secondary data. Findings – The key requirements for process improvement in small and medium software companies were identified as user involvement, use of evolutionary requirements engineering process improvement (REPI) strategy, change management, training and education, management support and commitment. Practical implications – The designed framework was validated to ensure that it can be applied in RE and process improvement in small and medium software companies. Validation results show that the proposed framework is applicable and can be used to improve RE and process improvement in small and medium software companies. Originality/value – The paper presents an improvement of the systematic approach to REPI by Kabaale and Nabukenya which is decomposed for easy understanding by non-technical readers and users.

Controlling and improving the processes used to develop software has been proposed as a primary remedy to the problems of schedule, over budget and non conformity to requirements in software development. Consequently the software development community has adopted several Software Process Improvement approaches such as the Software Capability Maturity Model published by the SEI as a criterion to evaluate and improve software process maturity. The premise of the Software Capability Maturity Model is that a mature development process will deliver products on time, within budget, requirements and of high quality. Research carried out in developed countries to evaluate the effectiveness of such programmes has confirmed that Software Process Improvement can contribute to the production of high quality software. However, this phenomenon has been less studied in smaller enterprises such as those in Uganda and other developing countries. This study examined the effectiveness of the Software Capability Maturity Model for use in small software developing enterprises and established that the model was difficult to implement in such organizations. Many of its constructs were irrelevant. An adoption model for software capability maturity was designed based on only those factors and constructs of the Software Capability Maturity Model that were found to be relevant to Small and Medium Enterprises. The new model was tested using case study and expert judgment methods. The experts and software developers indicated that the proposed model is more applicable in Small and Medium Enterprises operating in resource constrained countries such as Uganda.

No abstract