Smallholder farmers' access to markets has traditionally been constrained by lack of market information. The desire to strengthen farmer access to market has seen the emergence of a number of projects that employ ICT tools in the provision of market information. This study assesses the conditioners of the use of ICT tools in general and mobile phones in particular by smallholder farmers for agricultural transactions. The study finds that several farmer, farm and capital endowment factors affect the use of ICT tools and mobile phones. Specifically, age, occupation, nearness to output market, number of crop enterprises, farming experience literacy and crop income explain the use of tools while gender, nearness to output market, household size, owning a phone, level of literacy, crop income and value of assets explain the intensity of use of the mobile for agricultural transaction purposes. It discusses the implications of these findings for policy.

With increasing water scarcity and competing uses and users, water use efficiency is becoming increasingly important in many parts of developing countries. The lake Naivasha basin has an array of different water users and uses ranging from large scale export market agriculture, urban domestic water users to small holder farmers. The small scale farmers are located in the upper catchment areas and form the bulk of the users in terms of area and population. This study used farm household data to explore the overall technical efficiency, irrigation water use efficiency and establish the factors influencing water use efficiency among small scale farmers in the Lake Naivasha basin in Kenya. Data envelopment analysis, general algebraic and modeling system, and Tobit regression methods were used in analyzing cross sectional data from a sample of 201 small scale irrigation farmers in the lake Naivasha basin. The results showed that on average, the farmers achieved only 63 % technical efficiency and 31 % water use efficiency. This revealed that substantial inefficiencies occurred in farming operations among the sampled farmers. To improve water use efficiency, the study recommends that more emphasis be put on orienting farmers toward appropriate choice of irrigation technologies, appropriate choice of crop combinations in their farms, and the attainment of desirable levels of farm fragmentation.

Water is a complex economic good. It requires optimal management to control rising scarcity and competition for use. South Africa like many other parts of the world is in the process of implementing market-based water policy reforms to attain equity, efficiency, and sustainability in water use. However, these reforms have not been entirely successful and water allocation problems persist. This could be due to many contributing factors, certainly, but this paper narrows down to identify possible transaction costs that would arise from the policy process. Transaction costs can be great hindrances to policy formation and implementation especially if they constitute a large component of total policy costs. However, transaction costs remain generally unmeasured and this study fills in this gap for the Olifants basin of South Africa. Specifically, the study identifies and quantifies transaction costs incurred by various stakeholders in the water policy process in the Olifants basin in South Africa. Further, determinants of irrigation farmers’ transaction costs are assessed using regression approaches. Results from this study allow evaluating existing policies ex-post for improvement purposes.

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