Africa & Arab region symposium promotes inter-regional EMS

The second EMS symposium for 2018 brought together two regions for the first time: Africa and the Arab region. The 39 participants appreciated meeting together as it enabled them to gain better insights into their respective situations and opportunities to promote inter-regional cooperation between EMS partners. The event was hosted by Egypt Post and its Head of International Relations Department, Sameh Solaiman and the Assistant Secretary General Pan African Union (PAPU) opened the two day meeting.

Market intelligence highlighted the large variations in the the adoption of e-commerce across the regions. With the rise in services facilitating cross border transactions (e.g. online payments) there is potential to grow EMS, as cross-border purchasing continues to become a larger part of the e-commerce market in the Africa and Arab regions. Indeed, less mature e-commerce countries in Africa and Arab region are seeing rapid increases in growth.  

This scope for international growth meant that participants valued the presentations from top-trade lanes partners, Japan and China who gave updates on service performance and growth strategies of their respective posts. There are opportunities for the posts from Africa and the Arab region to partner with them and build preferential EMS relationships that cultivate new business.

The sharing of ideas from the two regions was extremely useful. Operators local knowledge offered new insights on ways to develop EMS in the region, this included presentations from Egypt, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Madagascar and Nigeria. Key to the symposium’s success were the breakout groups where members discussed, identified and committed to implementing top three strategies to improve end-to-end EMS performance in 2018 and 2019. 

It was an excellent event and the mix of the two regions offered a chance for new networking to promote inter-regional cooperation between EMS partners.