TANZANIA AWARDED S42 ADDRESSING STANDARD RECOGNITION CERTIFICATE

The picture of the S42 Addressing Standard Recognition Certificate

From left representative of Czech
Republic, Chairman of the Addressing Group, Mr. Ali Bakheet from Saud
Arabia Director General of the UPU, Ambassador Bishar Hussein,
Representative of Tanzania Mrs. Rehema Makuburi, Director Postal Affairs
TCRA and China representative.

Another picture taken during the award ceremony

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UNITED REPUBLIC OF TANZANIA

TANZANIA COMMUNICATIONS REGULATORY AUTHORITY

INTRODUCTION
On 1^st
November 2013, the United Republic of Tanzania was awarded by the
Universal Postal Union (UPU) a recognition certificate for her
contribution to the UPU S42 Addressing Standard Template Development.
The recognition ceremony was organised during the conference of the
Postal Operations Council at the capital city of Switzerland which is
the seat of the Universal Postal Union which is a specialized agency of
the United Nations (UN) in matters related to postal communications.
Besides Tanzania (United Rep.), Belarus, Belgium, China (People’s Rep.)
and Czech Republic qualified for the award of recognition certificate.

Quality
addressing and postcode systems are essential to the socio-economic
infrastructure and development of a country. They also form the
cornerstone of quality postal services, facilitating business
transactions and hence the country’s economic growth. Address networks
are crucial to businesses’ ability to operate. Address networks are
infrastructures that facilitate the process of doing business and,
consequently, economic development.

S42INTERNATIONAL ADDRESSING STANDARD

The
UPU standard provides a kind of dictionary of the possible components
of postal addresses, together with examples and constraints on their use
in a given country. The S42 international addressing standard consists
of:

a set of postal address components used in worldwide addresses;
languages for expressing address templates, i.e. formal descriptions of address formatting rules;
provides
country-specific address templates. A country defining its S42 template
provides precise information about its address elements and formatting rules;
creates a library of templates that can be easily incorporated into computer systems for managing addresses.

During the process of launching
of template development, Tanzania contacted the S42 expert group at the
Universal Postal Union by submitting a sample data set, which consisted
address examples representing all the address formats recommended by
the United Republic.

Each address in the sample needed
to be mapped into S42 elements reflecting their use in the country. For
example, mapping the address lines in different delivery methods and
explaining whether is a rural or urban address with indication of
thoroughfare type.

On
the basis of a mapped sample, the S42 expert group creates a template
which is fed into a computer program known as a tester. This program
reassembles each address from elements and checks the result against the
submitted data. The test of the template is positive when all addresses
from the sample have been assembled correctly.

At the end of the process, the Tanzania delegation to the Addressing Group was involved in checking the following:

that all addresses in the sample data set are properly formatted;
the sample contains a sufficiently complete representation of formats recommended by the United Republic; and
the addresses are correctly mapped to S42 elements.

Following the procedure above, the Tanzania S42 standard was approved in April 2013 and a ceremony was planned for 1^st November 2013..

RECOGNITION CEREMONY

The Certificate of Recognition is granted when a country has achieved the development

and maintenance of an agreed or
accepted address template.The S42 recognition ceremony is normally
designed to raise postal administrations’ awareness on the value of S42
and encourage them to join the S42 certification program.

TANZANIA S42 TEMPLATE

The approved Tanzania S42 template comprising of 6 address types:-

URBAN – Street type (Use of Ward Postcode)
URBAN – Informal Settlements (Use of Ward Postcode)
RURAL with the village setup – Village + Hamlet or Kitongoji (Use of Ward Postcode)
POSTAL
OFFICE DELIVERY (P.O. Box, Private bag, Postrestante) – (Use of Post
office Postcodeallocated to the respective post offices)
Combination of P. O. Box and Street type (Use of the Ward Postcode)
Combination of Street type with Big mailers assigned Postcodes (Use of Government or Big mailers Postcode)

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE S42 ADDRESSING STANDARD RECOGNITION CERTIFICATE

Efforts by Tanzania to implement the new addressing and postcode system have produced positive results in the international arena.

Standards are important prerequisites for effective postal operations and for interconnecting the global network. Tanzania is expected to boost its global connectivity.
The standards
improve the exchange of postal-related information between posts, and
promote the compatibility of UPU and international postal initiatives.
Tanzania has become one of the elite group of countries to attain S42 Addressing standard recognition.
The address template represents the internally used and publicly promoted address format. The postal sector is expected to capitalize on this strength to promote its domestic business.
It is a
good example to the world for the country that has offered the UPU a
Special Ambassador to drive the Addressing the World – an Address for
Everyone initiative.