Kenya is among the countries in Africa selected by the United Nations (UN) global postal coordinator Universal Postal Union (UPU) to develop an e-commerce hub that according to the country’s Technology ministry will see the merger of postal and courier services with technology.
The e-commerce hub in Kenya will be a regional center, serving the East African market with UPU seeking to tap into the Kenya Posta’s extensive postal presence in the region. The hub will run under the tag Ecom@Africa that aims to assist postal corporations in Africa to develop efficient e-commerce services.
By April of this year, six other countries besides Kenya had shown interest in participating in Ecom@Africa. From Central and West Africa, Ivory Coast and Cameroon lead the pack while from the southern region, South Africa is a candidate. Djibouti is another East African country that showed interest while North Africa featured Morocco and Tunisia.
Kenya’s Information Communication and Technology (ICT) Cabinet Secretary (CS), Joe Mucheru said this is an initiative that will greatly boost Kenya’s positioning in local and regional e-commerce. The CS said the international value of the opportunity is estimated to rise to Ksh262 trillion by 2022.
“Postal and courier services are implementing new services to adopt to customer demands for electronic services including online truck and trace, email post and other advanced services like digital identities, mobile applications and website integration,” he said during a celebration of world post day on October 9.
UPU Director General Bishar Abdirahman Hussein said “Posta is the widest physical distribution network in the world as they go where no other services go, from the highest mountains to the driest deserts knocking on everyone’s doors and it know individuals by name.”
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He said that post has been threatened by advancements in technologies but said not until the day they invent how to send parcels from one computer to another will postal services be threatened.
Postmaster General and chief executive of the Postal Corporation of Kenya, Dan Kagwe said that the postal service has come up with new and innovative products to remain relevant in the era of technology.
*Quotes from Kenya News Agency
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