History of the Department

The department of Informatics and Information Technology (DIIT) is one of the five departments of the College of Natural and Applied Science (CoNAS) of the Sokoine University of Agriculture. The Department began as a Section in the Department of Mathematics and Biometry at the Solomon Mahlangu Campus (SMC) in 2008. The Department of Informatics was officially established in 2010 as part of the then Faculty of Science. In 2017, it was merged with the Department of Mathematics and Biometry to form the Department of Mathematics, Informatics and Computational Sciences (DMICS). The Department of Informatics and Information Technology (DIIT) was established in 2021, combining Informatics and Computational Sciences from DMICS, academic staff from the Sokoine National Library of Agriculture (SNAL), and the Center for Information and Communication Technologies (CICT).

The Department of Informatics only offered one degree, the Bachelor of Science in Informatics. This curriculum of this program was reviewed in 2018 to determine whether it meets the needs of the market. It was discovered that the program name was uncommon among prospective students, so many did not choose it, and thus the number of enrolled students decreased year after year. This program was discontinued in favor of the Bachelor of Science in Information Technology (BIT). Following the merger and formation of the DIIT, the non-degree programs from CICT, namely the Certificate in IT (CIT) and Diploma in IT (DIT), as well as the Diploma in Records, Archives and Information Management (DRAIM) and Diploma in Information and Library Services (DILS) from SNAL, are now available in the Department. SNAL also brought to the department a Bachelor of Information and Records Management (BIRM), a Masters in Information Studies, and a PhD in Information Sciences. The department is also planning to launch a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology and Innovation (BITIN) and a Master of Science in Information and Knowledge Management (MIKM) program in the 2022/23 academic year.