Embrace ICT or die, Fred Matiang’i tells postal firms

A Cabinet minister has asked traditional communication channels to embrace technology if their businesses are to remain sustainable.

ICT CS Fred Matiang’i on Wednesday urged Postal Corporation of Kenya and other courier service providers to embrace the Internet and diversify to products that take advantage of technology.

“The ICT sector today is undergoing tremendous changes, thanks to increased liberalisation, competition and emergence of new technologies. The changing environment calls for adjustments in operations to survive the intense competitive pressure from other ICT-enabled services such as instant messaging technologies. Posta still has an opportunity despite the coming of new communication technologies,” said Mr Matiang’i.

He spoke at the beginning of a three-day East African communications organisation conference on leveraging ICTs in transformation of postal and courier sector in Nairobi.

The meeting is being attended by officials from the Universal Postal Union and the Pan African Postal Union.

The more than 200 delegates from the region are expected to deliberate on ways of managing and reshaping the postal infrastructure to adapt to current ICT developments. The sector in Kenya is estimated to be worth Sh13 billion annually.

In Africa, posting of letters accounts for cumulative income of 36 per cent, parcels and logistics 13.2 per cent, while postal financial services (13.2 per cent) the rest of the income is from other services.

Postal services have gone through lean times since the advent of mobile technologies in the late 90s.

The 214 operators in Kenya have increasingly found challenges from the 23 million internet users and the over 32 million mobile subscribers, which imply a SIM card penetration rate of 78 per cent.

Mobile subscriber growth has averaged 13 per cent annually over the past four years.