Radio programming for youth uptake in agriculture in Nyanza Region, Kenya

Abstract

Youths participation in agriculture is at a lower level yet still decreasing worldwide (Proctor and Lucchesi 2012); this trend is the same for Nyanza region of Kenya. this study interogate youths in this region to understand how radio can be used to encourage their participation in agriculture. Radio is a vital tool in information disermination as it reach a large number of people including those in rural areas (Akugizibwe et al, 2011). This study was done in four Counties of Nyanza region namely Siaya, Kisumu, Homabay and Kisii. The specific objectives of this study are i) To investigate reasons why most youths do not participate in agricultural production in Nyanza region. ii) To assess why current agricultural radio-programmes do not influence youths’ participation in agriculture and, iii) To suggest better ways which radio can disseminate agricultural information to influence youths’ participation in agriculture. In summary, the study found out that; i) the major reasons why most youths do not participate in agricultural production in the region is that they consider it to be high labor intensive, low income generation activity and also agriculture to them is seen as belongs to failures in life among others. ii) In assessing why current agricultural radio-programmes do not influence youths’ participation in agriculture, the study found out that there were challenges in the radio listenership of agricultural programs majorly caused by the inconvenient time of airing agricultural programmes on radio, other competing programmes in radio which were of more interesting to youths than agricultural programmes, high cost of buying batteries especially those in the rural areas among others which are explained in this paper. iii) In suggesting ways through which radio can disseminate agricultural information better to influence youths’ participation in agriculture, the study found out that repeat of agriculture programmes at different times of the day would be the best way to solve the challenge followed by involvement of the youths in content making which would enable the programmes to be friendly to the youths, the third solution to the listenership challenge was the use of agritips between other radio programme which are interesting to the youths as this would draw their attention and make them be interested in the full programes on agriculture. There are also other ways proposed to improve listenership of the youths to agriculture radio programmes covered within this study.