Digital literacy training to promote diffusion of digital agricultural tools to smallholder farmers: evidence from a randomized intervention in Egypt

Despite growing enthusiasm about the potential of digital innovations to transform agrifood systems, adoption among smallholder farmers in Africa remains low and heterogeneous. While the proliferation of digital tools targeting smallholder farmers is encouraging, the vast majority remain at pilot stages, facing barriers such as limited awareness among farmer, digital illiteracy, usability challenges, and low trust among farmers. This paper evaluates alternative digital literacy interventions designed to address these demand-side barriers and enhance smallholder farmers’ knowledge, utilization, trust, and uptake of two Egyptian mobile apps offering marketing, advisory, and input delivery services. Following a Training of Trainers (TOT) model, we designed and implemented a randomized controlled trial to test three variants of digital literacy training: standard classroom-based digital literacy training (T1), digital training complemented (preceded) by a video-based play (T2), digital training complemented (preceded) by a live community play (T3), and a control group (C). We find that the different variants of digital training led to statistically significant increases in uptake and utilization of digital tools. Specifically, the standard digital training alone increased uptake by 20 percentage points and utilization by 18 percentage points. The interventions also improved farmers’ trust in digital tools by 8–13 percentage points. Surprisingly, for some outcomes, the digital literacy training alone outperformed the combined approaches that incorporated edutainment nudges. We explore possible explanations, including group size effects and social influence dynamics during the plays. We also document heterogeneity in the impact of these interventions across farmers’ gender and age. Our findings offer insights into designing cost-effective, scalable interventions that build digital capabilities and trust among smallholder farmers, while cautioning against assuming edutainment always strengthens adoption outcomes.