Abstract

The debate on the factors constraining the adoption of agricultural technologies in Southern African countries is still open. This paper assesses the perception and the level of adoption of a set of agricultural technologies by the key actors in a Northern Inland Mozambique. These key actors formed two groups: (1) Technicians, who are the local government officials and are responsible for the adoption of agricultural technologies in the area; (2) Extension farmers, who are local farmers, and leaders in different communities of the area; they work together with the technicians to prove new technologies and to promote them within the local farmer’s communities. The data was collected through surveys with 10 technicians (20% women) and 8 extension farmers (37.5% women), assessing their perception of the adoption of agricultural technologies in Chitima, Mozambique between 2012 and 2017. Results show that technicians declare seed varieties as the easily adopted technology by the farmers, but the extension farmers declared that they do not care about the type of technology as long as it increases the crop yield and the income. This reflects a misunderstanding between technicians and extension farmers that could be constraining the adoption of agricultural technologies in Chitima.

Key words: Agriculture, local farmers, Mozambique, technology adoption.