The Effect of Digital Literacy Skills on Rural Kenyans' Smallholder Farmers' Livelihoods

This paper examines digital literacy skills' effects on smallholder farmers' livelihoods in the marginalised arid and semi-arid regions of Laikipia County, Kenya. Employing a quantitative survey with baseline and endline data, the study examines seven categories of digital literacy skills and forty competencies based on previous researchers' frameworks, and new categories of skills in the seven skill categories: Hardware and software operations, Information and data literacy; Communication and collaboration; Cyber hygiene; Problem-solving; Mobile device skills; and Online work skills. The results across these seven categories of skills show that the digital literacy skills framework presented in this paper effectively enhances the farmers' livelihoods. The novel introduction of cyber hygiene and online work skills in the digital skills training frameworks for smallholder farmers is a new insight from this paper. The study recommends that digital skills training programmes be designed to support sustainable livelihoods and contribute to digital inclusion in digital agriculture, food security and rural community empowerment. It is recommended that the following be done to build on this research: Investigate the effects of cultural and gender aspects on digital development and conduct studies in artificial intelligence (AI) based agricultural advisory systems for smallholder farmers.