The Digital for Development (D4D) Hub is a strategic platform that aims to strengthen digital cooperation between the European Union and its Member States (Team Europe) and partners in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the EU neighbouring countries. Our joint mission is to promote a human-centric approach to the digital transformation. We do so by fostering multi-stakeholder collaboration, boosting investments, facilitating dialogue, and increasing coordination.

The D4D Hub kicked off its activities in Africa in December 2020 with the goal of strengthening digital collaboration and developing a shared strategic vision between African and European partners. In this context, the D4D Hub is collaborating with Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) on various trade and commerce related topics.

The e-Commerce strategy of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was officially approved at the 90th session of the Council of Ministers held in July 2023, showing the significant step taken by the Commission towards harnessing the power of e-commerce for sustainable development. This strategic framework envisions a sustainable, inclusive, and secure e-commerce ecosystem that supports ECOWAS' efforts to leverage technology for structural change, regional integration and promote economic diversification and job creation.

To address the ECOWAS Commission’s vision, four strategic goals were proposed. The first strategic goal aims to strengthen ministries of trade to support domestic and cross-border eCommerce development, the second to secure trust along the e-commerce supply chain from producers to consumers, the third to access to e-commerce statistics and market information, and the fourth strategic goal to foster inclusion for e-commerce development in ECOWAS region.

Under the second strategic goal, the strategy focuses on the e-commerce stakeholders, aiming to enhance trust in e-transactions and trust in logistics and delivery services. Therefore, one of the key e-commerce stakeholders in ECOWAS Member States associated with the strategic goal 2 is the postal sector stakeholders.

Indeed, a greater contribution to the development of e-commerce is expected from the postal services. Consequently, it was agreed to better structure the link between postal services and e-commerce needs, with transparency and accreditation mechanisms to secure e-commerce process.

The postal sector should benefit in return from the transformation of the traditional postal services into a modern e-commerce and logistics centre, the designation of e-commerce delivery/logistics strategy for the postal sector, and the implementation of a harmonized and widespread use of digital addressing.

Therefore, the review of digital addressing experiences and a regional agreement for a common approach are part of the specific measures defined towards achieving strategic objectives requiring the involvement of the postal sector stakeholders in Member States. 

Given this context, ECOWAS Commission, with the support D4H Hub, with the through the Directorate of Digital Economy and Post is organising a virtual workshop, bringing together digital economy, trade and postal experts from the region. The aim is to sensitise on specific measures of the ECOWAS e-Commerce Strategy related to digitalisation specifically from the postal sector, find out what is occurring in digital addressing in the region, share experiences on implementing digital addressing systems, and deliberate on the harmonisation needed to support the achievement of the second strategic objective of the eCommerce strategy.