Influence of Sorghum Farmers 'Access to Communication Channels on Their Access to Climate Variability Adaptation Strategies in the Semi-Arid Zone of Cameroon

This article addresses the problem of the performance of communication channels in influencing farmers’ perception of climate variability and their access to climate variability adaptation strategies. It aims to compare the influence of sorghum farmers' access to ICTs and interpersonal channels on their climate variability perception and their access to adaptation strategies, in order to make recommendations for improving their resilience to climate variability. The stratified random sampling method was used to select study sites, which consist of twenty (20) villages, and the sample, which consists of six hundred (600) family farms households’ heads. Primary data were collected using a mixed survey questionnaire (closed and semi-open). Descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage) were used to analyze the sorghum farmers’ climate variability perception and their access to adaptation strategies. The correlations between sorghum farmers' access to communication channels (ICTs, interpersonal channels) and the their climate variability perception, the correlations between the sorghum farmers’ climate variability perception and their access to adaptation strategies, as well as that correlations between the sorghum farmers' access to communication channels and their access to the adaptation strategies were analyzed using the chi-square test. It appears that the access rate of sorghum farmers to a communication channel is not proportional to its influence on their climate variability perception and their access to the adaptation strategies; and the access of sorghum farmers to ICTs plays a more important role than their access to interpersonal channels in their climate variability perception, whereas their access to interpersonal channels plays a more important role than their access to ICTs (especially radio and television) in their access to the adaptation strategies. Improving the resilience of sorghum farmers to climate variability requires the proper use of each channel, but the telephone is in fact the ICT on which agricultural extension must henceforth rely most for effective improvement of the climate variability perception by sorghum farmers and their access to adaptation strategies.