Analysis of smallholder farmer’s willingness and barriers to adopt digital financial services: The Case of Ngaka Modiri Molema District, South Africa

Access to financial resources by smallholder farmers remains challenge in South Africa. In most cases, landing institutions primarily focus on commercial farmers despite the fact that majority of the population is in one way or the other involved in smallholder farming. One other reason for this exclusion is that, financial institutions have been using digital financial system to process the applications. Therefore, the aim of the study was to identify factors influencing willingness to adopt digital financial services smallholder farmers in Ngaka Modiri Molema district, North West Province. For this purpose, primary data was collected using structured questionnaire from a sample of 86-smallholder farmer’s, which was obtained using RASOFT calculator. A binary logistic regression model was utilized to analyse socioeconomic factors influencing the willingness to adopt digital financial services in the study area. The results from descriptive statistics show that the majority of the farmers are older than 50 years and had less years at school. The results from logistic regression model show that gender and level of education had a negative relationship with digital financial services adoption and the indicators were significant at 5 percent level. The results further shows that there are barriers such as lack of information, lack of extension services and poor ICT infrastructure in the area. The study therefore recommends that government should increase extension visibility to capacitate farmers on the awareness of ICTs.