Background

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) adopted a Postal Service Master Plan (PSMP) for West Africa in December 2016, in Abuja, Nigeria.

The PSMP established a diagnosis of the postal services within ECOWAS, at both the regional and national levels. This analysis was used to determine the regulatory capacity and performance of the postal market in each Member State. The analysis resulted in definitions of Regional and National programmes.

It is within this context that the PSMP identified the urgent need to set up a database/portal with online access to information on postal markets and the situation of Designated Operators (DOs) within the ECOWAS region.
Objective

SIGPOST, the ECOWAS Management Information System (MIS) for the postal sector is to:

• Collect and provide information on postal sector development in the region
• Provide online access to current postal operating and financial data at both national and regional levels
• Improve the overall ability to collect basic postal data by establishing standardised Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

There will be baseline information of postal markets as follows:

• Policy & Legal: postal sector policies, laws and regulatory texts.

• Operational: volumes, revenues, numbers of post offices and post office boxes, staff and quality of service performance
• Corporate finances: financial statements and overall financial results, revenue contribution and cost by product and service area
• Financial services: numbers and assets of saving and checking accounts, remittances
• Technology utilised: numbers of post offices connected to the internet; ICT product enhancements (e.g. financial services, e-commerce, trace and track etc.)
• Competition: levels of formal and informal competition within member countries

The actors and beneficiaries of SIGPOST are: