Opening remarks on Postal Strategy and ICT in Southern Africa by Yunus Carrim, Minister of Communications, South Africa, at the SADC Meeting of Ministers Responsible for ICTs, Communications and Postal, Johannesburg
Welcome, welcome, most warmly to Johannesburg! We are very pleased and honoured to host the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Postal Strategy Conference this morning and the Extraordinary SADC Ministers’ Meeting this afternoon. We hope you will not only find the meetings rewarding and productive, but will enjoy your stay here. Please feel very welcome.
As you know, South Africa chairs the Universal Postal Union’s Global Postal Strategy Committee, and it is in this capacity that we host this morning’s Conference. The afternoon Extraordinary SADC Ministers’ meeting will be chaired by Minister, Brown James Mbinganjira of Malawi, the chairperson of the Ministers’ Forum.
There’s not much for me to say. Just a few opening remarks really. Much of the work for our decision-making today has already been done by the officials over the past two days, and we got a very promising report from them, which, moreover, suggests that the decisions we take today are likely to be consensual.
I will focus, briefly, on postal issues. But, of course, postal issues cannot be separated from the other information and communications technology (ICT) issues we will be looking at this afternoon. Ultimately, the postal strategy we decide on for our countries must be part of our overall ICT strategy. And we are all clear in the SADC, as are countries the world over, that we have to strengthen our ICT sector, that we have to become, all of us, far more effective knowledge economies and information societies. We need to strengthen ICT to achieve our economic growth, development and job-creation targets. We need too to ensure that this serves to reduce the digital divides not just between the countries of the North and South, but also within our countries.
If we are to do all this, we have to work far more effectively together in the SADC. We are just too interdependent not to do so. We need each other. So let’s act together more! What is ICT about if not breaking barriers?
And all of us, I think we’ll all agree, have to move faster on ICT. Or we’re going to be left behind. Other countries are not going to wait for us. We have to adapt and change and begin to master this ever-changing ICT world we are all swept up in. We have to make changes. And this applies to the post offices in our countries too. They have to develop new roles in a digital age.
For all the far-reaching changes in ICT in recent years, in particular the increasing use of cellphones and computers, and the internet, the post offices in our countries remain relevant. In most of our countries the post office in some form or another has the largest footprint, reaching rural areas that other communication networks don’t. We cannot reinforce and increase the marginalisation of the rural poor in our countries by allowing post offices to thin out.
But for them to continue to deliver to the rural poor, they have to adapt overall to the digital age and become more relevant to and effective and efficient for a range of other strata in our societies.
The World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) Commitments and the Connect Africa Goals mandate us all to deploy ICT infrastructure to post offices, schools, libraries, municipalities and other public centres – to ensure the improvement of the provision of services as well as access to information. The deployment of ICTs to post offices should seek to:
- Promote universal access, as the Post Office usually has the widest reach.
- Provide a wide range of affordable postal services in the interests of the economic growth and development.
- Encourage investment and innovation in the postal industry.
- Promote the development of the information society, and build social cohesion.
In South Africa, we have transformed some of our post offices into Thusong community centres to increase access to ICT services for public use – so traditional Post Offices have been converted into citizen centres. This is based partly on the recognition of the important role post offices play in giving the poorest of the poor access to basic financial services.
Generally the postal sector is the hub for three principal economic flows around the world: information, goods and money. In South Africa, we have legislation to corporatize the Post Bank. The Bank falls under the auspices of the post office but will be more streamlined in providing financial services mainly to specific strata of our people. Some of aims are:
- Increased participation in the economy.
- Mass mobilisation of savings and investments funds from the broader community.
- To create a bank of first choice for the unbanked and underserved population, providing them with appropriate banking products and financial services through the postal network.
- To contribute to the culture of saving.
The post office can enable people to efficiently connect with the world by distributing information, goods, and financial and government services; leveraging their broad reach and embracing change, technology and innovation.
To ensure that the post office and postal services continue to be relevant to consumers, business and government, we need to take radical action to reposition it as a major building block for connecting citizens. We need to see to the post office as an important driver of e-commerce, and this can only be achieved by adopting strategies to advance its modernization.
Broadband is very key for all our countries. And we need to use the post offices to spread this. We have in this country last December adopted “SA Connect”, our Broadband Policy and Strategy, and we want the post offices to be actively involved in this.
The post offices can also be more actively used to deliver government services. In this country, the Department of Basic Education has used the post offices to deliver text books to schools in two provinces and reported that the post offices delivered them very efficiently. Consideration is also being given to using the post offices to more actively deliver social grants, like pensions, disability and child-care grants.
We are also as the Department of Communications increasingly using the post offices rather than private sector providers for postal services. We are to engage with other national departments, the provinces, municipalities and state-owned companies over time to make more use of the post offices. In return, the post offices need to be far more effective and efficient.
One of the major challenges we have in the postal sector in our country is the poor management-labour relations. The frequent strikes have led to many businesses and other customers of the post offices abandoning them to opt for private sector providers. We need to win their confidence back. As a Department, without interfering in the internal labour relations within the post offices we have been trying to help improve labour relations – but this is a very challenging area.
The post office, we are clear, as a Department, has to be supported. It has a crucial role to play in the developmental state we are trying to forge in this country. It seems to me that whatever the character of the state that we are seeking to forge in our respective countries might be, the post office would remain relevant, and as governments we need to give them more support.
The issues we deal with in this afternoon’s important Extraordinary Meeting of SADC Ministers are closely linked to our discussions this morning on the role of the post offices in a digital age. Especially important are broadband, digital migration and mobile roaming.
Given that the June 2015 International Telecommunications Union deadline looms for digital migration, we need top move fast on rolling this out. Four of our countries, it seems, have started the migration and others are in various stages of preparing to do so. We need to share experiences, and help each other. I hear that the officials who have been meeting since Sunday recognise the urgency of this and are to propose this afternoon that the importance of meeting the ITU June 2015 deadline for digital migration be raised at the next SADC Heads of State Meeting.
At an informal meeting of the Ministers this morning there were four points on which there seemed to be consensus:
- We need to urge countries that have not started with their digital migration programmes to begin to do as soon as possible.
- Those countries that are more advanced in this process share their experiences and, where possible, assist those that are behind.
- Where possible, stakeholders be encouraged to share infrastructure and competition be encouraged in the pay television sector.
- Serious consideration be given to accepting the officials proposals that the importance of digital migration and the need to implement it urgently be considered for discussion at the next SADC Heads of State Meeting.
Of course, these issues were discussed informally and need to be properly considered at this afternoon’s meeting and the appropriate decisions taken.
The Ministers also met last night and agreed in principle to support the basic thrust of the Botswana Communique on Mobile Broadband in the form of a resolution to be tabled at this afternoon’s meeting. There were some amendments proposed that were also consensually agreed to.
So we have much to talk about today. And, of course, much, much more to do in the period ahead! Welcome again! I hope we have a good meaning – and that it leads to even better outcome.
