How do development actors do “ICT for development”? A strategy‐as‐practice perspective on emerging practices in Ghanaian agriculture

Abstract

This paper examines how development actors within the Ghanaian agricultural sector enact information and communication technology (ICT) in their day‐to‐day outreach practices with smallholder farmers. We draw on an in‐depth qualitative case study, informed by the theoretical perspective of “strategy‐as‐practice” to answer the research question: “what ICT‐mediated strategic practices are used by development actors in the Ghanaian agriculture sector?” The research findings reveal that (1) the activities of development actors are meshed within a network of interdependencies; (2) the enacted strategic practices reflect the trade‐off between novelty of content and novelty of the technologies used to deliver it; and lastly, (3) the praxis of development actors for doing ICT for development consists of hybrid strategies, combining bottom‐up approaches consistent with farmers' indigenous smallholder logic, with top‐down imperatives framing agriculture “as a business” and nurturing value‐chain integration. Consequently, our research points to the impact of ICT initiatives as step‐wise and attained over the long term, rather than disruptive and attained in the immediate term.

Making the developing world a better place with high‐impact IS research

“…Karanasios and Slavova () argue that “strategy as a practice” can be utilised by development actors within the Ghanaian agricultural sector to enact ICT in their daily outreach practices with small farmers. Such practices encompass employing contemporary technologies (eg, mobile SMS and voice technology, web portals, integrated voice response, and purpose‐built digital technologies developed in‐house), as well as legacy technologies (eg, radio, TV, and audio and video recordings) to deliver advisory (eg, fertiliser application, improved seeds, and soil fertility) and marketing (eg, international standards, grading and sorting, and prices) information services to these farmers.…”

FinTech ecosystem practices shaping financial inclusion: the case of mobile money in Ghana

“…During this process, we engaged with existing theory, concepts and content categorisation schemes (Urquhart, 2016). This led to concepts and theories on innovation ecosystems, financial inclusion and ICT for development (e.g., Karanasios & Slavova, 2019;Lagna & Ravishankar, 2021). The research process transitioned from pure inductive to integrating and building concepts from the literature.…”

Digital social innovation: An overview and research framework

“…Their agency results, in part, from their ability to bring external knowledge and resources (Hota et al, 2019;Parthiban et al, 2021;Shalini et al, 2021), their ICT expertise (Krauss, 2018;Leong et al, 2015;Qureshi et al, 2021a) and their reflexivity (Claus et al, 2021;Krauss, 2018;Qureshi, Riaz, & Ruebottom, 2017;van Wijk et al, 2020). In contrast, as shown in Figure 1, their social embeddedness helps them be aware of local formal and informal institutions (Bernardi et al, 2019;Masiero & Prakash, 2020;, leverage local knowledge and resources (Escobedo et al, 2021;Hota et al, 2019;Karanasios & Slavova, 2019) and navigate exploitative social structures (Iivari et al, 2018;Qureshi et al, 2018;.…”