Ghana Post set to tap into growing e-commerce services

• Posted on July 6, 2018
• by Ellsamwise King
• Comment

The Minister of Communications, Ursula Owusu Ekuful, has challenged the Ghana Post Service to review its strategy and take advantage of the e-commerce opportunities.

The Minister stated that even though technology is disrupting economies all over the world, Africa is positioned to benefit from the boom.

The Ghana Post is mandated to undertake delivery services to various addresses that the service has registered in its systems.

But the rapid flow of technology is considered a threat to the traditional posting system if it fails to re-strategize to meet the new trends.

The Minister, who was speaking at the opening of a West African Postal Conference in Accra, stressed the need for Ghana to hook unto the dynamism of the postal services with technology.

“One of the world’s oldest industries, the postal service, is at a crossroads and it is our collective duty to explore how we can transform postal operations across the region by maximizing the opportunities that digitization offers,” she said.

For instance, reports suggest that Africa now leads the rest of the world as a mobile-first market and internet penetration increases.

In addition, projections by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) are that the continent’s e-commerce market is expected to reach between 50 to 75 billion dollars per year within the next 5 to 10 years.

The governing New Patriotic Party has, as a result, rolled out the National Digital Property Addressing System with the aim of supporting the agenda of formalizing the Ghanaian economy.

The system among other things assigns every residential and commercial property with a unique identifier, which is an electronic address.

Meanwhile, the West African Postal Administrations are also working at obtaining a common platform to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and services across the sub-region.

This should also reduce cost and improve efficiency.