Ministry of Agriculture hasn't updated its website in more than a year

If Zimbabwe's decade of deep economic problems meant that it fell behind many other countries in its development of an internet culture, in the last couple of years the country has begun to catch up. There is therefore absolutely no excuse for the Ministry of Agriculture to have last updated its website way back in 2010.

Not only that, the website (http://www.moa.gov.zw/) has a very old fashioned home page that greets the visitor with a stiff, boring ministry 'mission statement.' The only other item on the home page is a excerpt about preparation for the Harare Agricultural Show...of 2010! Even if it had been about the show of 2011, that would have been two months old news that no longer deserved front page billing. On the rest of the site there is almost no information that someone could use directly, or details about the ministry's activities, or contact details of the ministry's many branches.

There is almost no excuse I can think of that could excuse this atrocious neglect of the resource that a well designed,detailed and regularly updated website could be. If the ministry is running the country's agriculture the same way it is ''running'' its web site, which should be its main marketing face to the world, no wonder Zimbabwe is food aid-dependent and in such trouble.

The Zimbabwe Review
http://www.thezimreview.com/