Botswana Post Kiosks Pilot In Sefalana Shops Successful

Pauline Dikuelo | Monday November 5, 2018 15:11

 

According to Botswana Post chief executive officer (CEO) Cornelius Ramatlhakwane, through their strategic collaboration with Sefalana in 2016, they have successfully piloted setting up post office kiosks.

“In the year under review, 10 more kiosks were constructed in Sefalana stores at a marginal cost. This smart and growing partnership has improved service access for Batswana using Sefalana stores in targeted villages,” he said.

The CEO said the business has grown over the years to appreciate the full extent of costs involved in setting up a building or a post office.

Ramatlhakwane said Botswana Post has undertaken to revisit its empowerment initiatives against a backdrop of proven research on the informal sector being a key enabler to success due to higher mobile telephony penetration.

“We intend to leverage on this and build a strong SMME market by extending most if not all Post office services through mobile technology platforms, targeting the low-end market especially.”

He said one of the notable innovative developments during the year was the introduction of a short message service (SMS) vendor channel called ‘Mobile Vend’, that enables the purchase or sale of prepaid electricity through SMS technology. 

He said the facility works on both smartphones and feature phones and the vendor is not required to make any investment on the infrastructure required.

Ramatlhakwane said since its inception in the third quarter of the year, the platform is processing transactions amounting to about P1 million a month, with more than 1,000 agents already registered.

“This has done away with the cost of procuring point-of-sale devices and is a significant saving for the street vendor. With further development of SMS technology lowering rates, more informal sector operators, commonly street vendors, will be gainfully employed as they offer sub-vending services on the understanding that they will retain higher margins and therefore earn more,” he said.