Abstract
Agriculture is the backbone of many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet, lack of efficient
extension systems to support agricultural development is widely seen as a missing link in
agricultural transformation in the region. International development agencies have in the
past four decades invested heavily in various extension models such as the Training and
Visit and Farmer Field School systems in order to enhance the performance of extension
workers. Despite such investments, the performance of extension agents does remain suboptimal
in many contexts. Studies in other sectors show that incentivizing worker
performance through nudges such as incentive realignment schemes that tie worker
performance to a pay/bonus system could enhance worker productivity. However, there is a
lack of incentive realignment studies that estimate the performance of extension agents in
sub-Saharan Africa. A potential hindrance to the application of such scheme to extension is
the absence of monitoring mechanisms to track the performance of extension agents who
often work across diverse local contexts to reach smallholder farmers with extension advice.
This study empirically estimates the effect of an information communication technology
(ICT)-based payment incentive system that tracks the performance of extension workers in
rural Uganda. It undertakes a quasi-experimental ex-post impact assessment of a payment
incentive realignment as an exogenous shift in the price of labor for extension services by
Ugandan Community Knowledge Workers (CKWs) in 2011. This study applies a
difference–in–difference with propensity score matching technique to estimate the
effect of an ICT-based incentive re-alignment scheme in 2011, on the performance of
461 CKWs in rural Uganda. The study shows that CKWs in rural Uganda respond positively
to an ICT-based performance incentive scheme that affects the price of labor. Results suggest
that such performance systems can enhance the productivity of CKWs – an exemplar of rural
extension agents in Uganda and elsewhere in developing countries. It also finds that younger
CKWs respond more productively to higher incentives than their older counterparts.
Therefore, the study suggests that extension policies that tie extension agents’ performance
to ICT-based payment incentives could enhance their performance and contribute towards
the sustainable developments goals on food security, among others, through multiplier
effects.
