Our Honourable host and Chairperson of the Plenipotentiary Conference,
Her Excellency Mrs Libon Li Likeng Minette,
Minister of Posts and Telecommunications of the Republic of Cameroon,
Honourable Ministers responsible for Posts in Africa Director-General of the UPU Amb Hussein,
and the Deputy Director-General, Mr Clivas Secretary-General of the Pan African Postal Union,
Mr Djibrine and Assistant Secretary-General, Mr Aduloju
Representatives of the African Union Commission, together with other regional and international bodies present
Esteemed delegates,
Friends and partners,
Bonjour,
A-salaam-alaykum, siku njema,
On behalf of my delegation, I would like to thank the Government and People of the Republic of Cameroon for the kind hospitality given to us since the start of this 9th Ordinary Session of the Plenipotentiary Conference. Merci Madam Minister. I am delighted to join this distinguished gathering to discuss the future work and direction of the Pan African Postal Union. Our task is to strengthen the functioning of our Union and to build a more competitive, innovative postal network that is able to meet the needs of its customers, and deliver valuable services to the people of our continent. The importance of regional and international coordination cannot be under-stated, due to cross border nature of postal service network. I congratulate all of us on the progress that we have made in the UPU on the development of the World Postal Strategy, and the quadrennial business plan. These tools to guide the development of the postal sector globally will help us to ensure the resources are allocated according to agreed global priorities, and assist us to monitor and evaluate the progress we make. For Africa, through the Regional Strategy Conference that was held in Sudan, we led the way in identifying the priorities of developing countries.
We were the first to identify our regional priorities, namely:
• Improvement of operational efficiency and e-commerce development
• Financial Services development
• Postal Sector development, and
• e-Services and diversification To achieve our goals, we need to modernise our organisation, the Pan African Postal Union, so that it can be better placed to assist us and to serve as a regional multilateral organisation. Madam Chair, I wish to share with you some of national programmes in driving our goals: After years of challenges faced by the Suoth African Post Office, we have begun implementing the turnaround strategy to bring about financial and operational stability. A new leadership has now been put in place and normal service has now resumed. We are investing over R4 billion through private capital and fiscal injection. ladies and gentlemen, Last week, our Central bank granted authorization to the South African Post Office to establish a fully flagged bank, the new Postbank. The corporitisation of the Post Bank is expected to be concluded in the next 12 months.
SAPO has a footprint of 2400 points of presences, half of which are in rural and underserved communities, that will assist us ensure all of our communities have access to banking services. For us, this is an important historic milestone for financial inclusion of all our citizens. We have also begun to implement the UPU International Financial System and to extend the use of the UPU International Postal System, in order to improve our payment systems, remittances, and the tracking and tracing of postal products. As South Africa we are on the eve of local government elections. One of the requirements to be on the voter's roll is to have a reasonable identifiable residential address. SAPO has rolled out over 12 million addresses.
As part of digitisation of services, SAPO is implementing a unique digitised residential addressing system called geo coding. We are also finalising our integrated ICT policy, where a number of the Postal Acts will be amended to ensure efficient regulation of the postal sector. In conclusion, South Africa takes this opportunity to humbly request your support for the re-election to the UPU Council of Administration for the period 2016-2020. I would like to congratulate the The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Republic of Cote d’Ivoire and the Republic of Tunisia for offering to welcome the world to Africa, with their offers to host the UPU Congresses in 2018, 2020 and 2022 respectively.
I look forward to us adopting new strategy to take the postal sector to be a valuable driver for socio-economic development in Africa in support of the AU Agenda 2063. . Asante sana, Merci beaucoup Obrigado, Shukran!
