The Nigeria Post & Telecommunications service, NIPOST, says it is adopting a system that would improve the delivery of its services. The innovation tagged “what3words address” is a global addressing system designed to help the postal service increase the number of homes it is capable of delivering to.
In a statement on Wednesday, NIPOST disclosed that Nigeria is the seventh country, and the third in Africa to adopt the system, which is already being used for mail deliveries in Mongolia, Saint Maarten, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Tonga and Solomon Islands.
Nigeria is noted to have a poor addressing system that allows only 20 per cent of its inhabitants to receive their mails at home while only about 478,000 boxes are available in the post offices.
To redress this situation and improve its services, NIPOST said it had set a target to raise its own home delivery services to over 70 per cent within the next two years.
“A postcode system does exist, but only 5 per cent of mails get properly addressed with the postcode, hampering the efforts of NIPOST to improve its quality of service,” the statement also said.
The service said that apart from the new “what3words” system which it has adopted to help it achieve these goals the rate is expected to hit 90 per cent by 2020 through the “Mail for Every House Initiative, MEHI.
NIPOST said the innovative global addressing system has divided the world into 57 trillion 3m x 3m squares, each having a unique three-word address.
“It means every home and business in Nigeria has a simple and accurate address that is easy to remember and to use.
For example, ///bracelets.hesitations.mutes refers to the exact 3m x 3m square at the entrance to the main post office in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja,” the statement said.
“The what3words API launched in 2013 is being integrated by business, applications and services across the world in a wide variety of sectors. It is also used by individuals via the free what3words app.”
The new system is available in 14 languages.
