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The Ministry of ICT, Postal and Courier Services has handed over 1000 brand new laptops to the Ministry of Agriculture.
Addressing journalists after the handover ceremony in Harare on Friday, the Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Settlement Hon Vangelis Harritatos explained how the ICT equipment will enhance efficiency in the transfer of data within his Ministry.
He said, “What these laptops will do is to allow our AGRITEX officers to enter their statistics into our system that collects that information not only for a national point of view, provincial point of view, district point of view, but from a farmer’s point of view, so that we can all know that a farmer who is in such a ward has this size of cattle, goat’s farm and many more, so this is the technology that was missing.”
Asked about which software they will use to store data on these laptops, Harritatos said his ministry has an ICT department that houses softwares.
Minister of ICT, Postal and Courier Services Dr. Jenfan Muswere, who was the guest of honor at the ceremony, added that the partnership of the two ministries will go a long way in boosting the country’s agricultural productivity.
“The ministry of ICT is working together with the ministry of lands and agriculture to ensure that we continue to have a bumper harvest. It will ensure that we are moving away from production to productivity,” he said.
POTRAZ Director General Dr. Gift Machengete, also spoke of the importance of ICTs in Agriculture.
“The importance of today’s event is that it’s a demonstration of collaboration between ministries, all brought together by ICT’s. As you are aware, ICT’s cut across everything that we do, so it cuts across every ministry’s mandate, and when you bring ICTs together with these other activities, like in this case it was agriculture, so when you bring ICT and agriculture, then you achieve a lot,” he said.
The handover of these laptops comes after the ministry of ICT through POTRAZ has of late given computers to rural and urban schools, as it seeks to digitize the educational sector.
