
Online shopping in Africa doesn’t work because of shipping and billing forms - oquidave
https://medium.com/@oquidave/online-shopping-in-africa-doesnt-work-because-of-this-web-form-e4974a8d165a
======
teekert
It's funny, even in the Netherlands we feel a (tiny, tiny) bit of this: all
foreign websites have address entry systems that always ask for a
state/province (and even faithfully produce a list of all our provinces). We
indeed have them but locals ignore them entirely, city, street, number and
postal code are all we, and domestic companies, use.

~~~
StavrosK
Same here in Greece, all the post office needs is your street name and
postcode. Not even city (the postcode defines that uniquely, same as
everywhere else). I don't know why forms get hung up on those.

~~~
Klathmon
Technically it's the same in the US.

Street number, name, and zip code is all you need, but even the US postal
service recommends keeping the city and state for redundancy.

It sometimes leads to funny situations if you live near city boundaries where
you can get mail sent TO multiple different cities that are all your address.

~~~
malyk
I live in a .zip code that spans eastern Emeryville and north Oakland and most
web forms these days force correct my address to Emeryville and won’t let me
change it to Oakland.

As an engineer I get it, but damn if it isn’t annoying to not be able to have
your real address on your packages...if only for aesthetic reasons.

~~~
niftich
ZIP Codes are not geographical entities and don't correspond to geographical
extent; rather, they are a hybrid between a discrete number of finite
delivery-points and an abstract way of capturing a postal delivery route. They
are often abused as geographical entities, which the Census Bureau has tried
to rectify with ZCTAs [1], but it's unclear whether most informal use of Zip
Codes is haphazard, or actually conforms to ZCTAs.

However, Zip Codes directly map to one preferred place name designated by the
USPS, and zero or more acceptable alternative place names. These are usually
inspired by, but don't necessarily correspond to municipalities and political
units that the lots in question belong under.

You're more than likely talking about Zip Code 94608, of whose preferred name
is 'Emeryville', but 'Oakland' is an acceptable name [2]. There is a lot of
software that takes the shortcut and autofills or autocorrects the preferred
name, especially because informal lists of Zip Codes seem to be easier and/or
cheaper to get a hold of than through official sources at the USPS [3].

Perhaps a nationally-known example is the Las Vegas Strip, most of whose
famous casino-hotels are located in the unincorporated town and CDP of
Paradise, but covered by two Zip Codes that only accept Las Vegas as the name.

In rural areas with weak local government, people develop an affinity for the
preferred place name of their address' Zip Code, because it's a standardized
way of referring to the locale where more specific names are not widely known.

[1]
[https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/zctas.html](https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/zctas.html)
[2] [https://california.hometownlocator.com/zip-
codes/data,zipcod...](https://california.hometownlocator.com/zip-
codes/data,zipcode,94608.cfm) [3]
[https://www.usps.com/nationalpremieraccounts/manageprocessan...](https://www.usps.com/nationalpremieraccounts/manageprocessandaddress.htm)

------
niftich
Blaming this on shipping and billing _forms_ , as the headline and the article
text suggests, is missing the forest for the trees. The deeper issue at play
is developer and business naïveté; trying to transplant knowledge and
assumptions that work fine elsewhere into a particular market where different
conditions exist.

It's sometimes easy to assume that if something works in sunny California, it
will be applicable in Michigan, or Germany, or anywhere on the globe, and for
large fractions of the globe this breaks down under scrutiny. After all, one
of the attractions of doing stuff "online" is to not be bound by physical
constraints, but activities like logistics clearly involves moving around
physical goods, and commerce is all about markets, so what works on one market
may fail miserably in a second. Even old-hat brick-and-mortar companies make
these mistakes, even if they don't skimp on a local consultant.

Anyone who's actually engaged in post or logistics in areas with limited
government-maintained addressing knows that communication is essential,
delivery places tend to be negotiated on the fly, and knowing how to get to
the destination is more important than where the destination is on a globe.
Newfangled coordinate-encoding systems don't solve this: intelligence and
know-how on the ground does.

Make no mistake, few of the companies with these problems value these markets.
If they valued these markets, they would've figured this out.

~~~
CM30
> It's sometimes easy to assume that if something works in sunny California,
> it will be applicable in Michigan, or Germany, or anywhere on the globe, and
> for large fractions of the globe this breaks down under scrutiny.

See also the falsehoods programmers believe about various things (not even
just addresses):

[https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-
falsehood](https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood)

------
liotier
A friend of mine who distributes consumer goods in Congo (yes, the whole of
Congo) through an online shop explained that a phone call is an essential part
of the delivery process - even more important than the address because it is
how the actual delivery location is negotiated.

Of course, this is only a problem for valuable items (one wouldn't trust
postal employees with that) - regular mail in Africa ends in a PO box.

Expecting customers to be map-literate or adopt whichever fancy geographic
coordinates keywords landgrab of the month is a bit hopeful and far removed
from logistical realities.

~~~
noobermin
How about google map pins? Would that help?

~~~
liotier
From being an Openstreetmap evangelist and trainer, I can tell you that most
people in the world (not an Africa-specific thing) have close to no idea how
to position themselves on a map... Which by the way is why turn-by-turn
navigation is so popular.

~~~
noobermin
FWIW, if people can learn to use a cellphone and order things online, they can
learn to pin themselves.

Regardless, I understand and agree with your point. I just think difficulty
with pinning on maps[0] limits its adoption vs. actually eliminating it.

[0] reasoning about maps in general is difficult for many people, not everyone
has well-developed spatial reasoning.

------
Delphiza
Online shopping doesn't work in Africa, not because of web forms with an
ability to capture localised addresses, but because of the lack of affordable,
reliable logistics. Africa is vast and largely rural. You can get reliable
delivery at a cost. Cheaper delivery options have a tendency for things to get
lost. While I applaud OP for bringing modern tech to Africa in the 'Silicon
Savannah', online shopping requires highly efficient logistics infrastructure
that goes beyond web forms. Source: I built and operated successful online
retail in Africa.

~~~
sangnoir
> Online shopping doesn't work in Africa... I built and operated successful
> online retail in Africa

Now that's a head-scratcher! Seriously though, I hate these overbroad
generalisations - obviously online shopping does work for some value of
Africa. I know of people in Africa who shop, pay for and arrange delivery of
second-hand Japanese _vehicles_ all online. It's a multi-million dollar
industry.

>..not because of web forms with an ability to capture localised addresses,
but because of the lack of affordable, reliable logistics.

Ironically, most African countries have functional postal services that are
struggling because WhatsApp has replaced letters. Online shops should partner
should partner with postal services instead of trying to "revolutionize
logistics" unsuccessfully. Trust me, the logistics are fine: if manufacturers
can get their product to even the most remote corners of a country, maybe look
into how they are doing it, instead of trying to re-invent it with a phone
app.

------
sharpercoder
I have also encountered web forms which _must_ validate my address. Turns out,
the backing database did not contain my address. I could not order at the
store. After contacting the store, they told me that their data was always
accurate and therefore I must be a fraud.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
The first time I ordered something from Amazon to be delivered to my
workplace, I spent like half an hour trying different variations of the
address so that it would pass the validation. And my workplace is a university
building where 200+ people work, in a European country.

Finally, I got it to work by typing "Campus of <X> Place, Faculty of <Y>
Building". It wouldn't work without the words "Place" and "Building", which we
don't ever use (we typically just write "Faculty of <Y>, Campus of <X>"). And
the form didn't provide any clue about that being the problem.

The address on a letter has always been a free text input field, it still is
when one writes private letters, and everything works fine. Why they have to
complicate so much something that just works is beyond me.

~~~
rurban
I guess in some Asian places the Z coordinate is also required, like Floor 24

~~~
pas
Aren't post boxes on the ground floor with names and flat/unit numbers?

~~~
hrktb
Packages that don’t fit post boxes still need to be delivered.

Also some places don’t show names for different reasons, so having accurate
numbers refering to the good entities can be critical.

------
vezycash
I checked out the linked
[https://plus.codes/individuals](https://plus.codes/individuals)

Steps for creating a Plus Code are: 1\. Open the Google Maps app. 2\. Touch
and hold a place to drop a pin on Google Maps. 3\. At the bottom, you’ll see
an address or a plus code. Tap this section to find all details of the
location and copy the plus code.

If the primary use case is creating an address for my current location - e.g.
Home. Then, the instructions are too many.

A "click this button" to create a Plus Code for your current location would
work wonder.

Or if they had an app, the single instruction above would equally apply.

 __* I think Plus Codes would fail most Zip Code validation tests.

~~~
simias
I agree with your feedback but even beyond that the "Enter city or plus code"
form seems broken. I went to a random place in mongolia, I got a plus code of
"5PJF+FJQ" and when I enter it in the form it doesn't work:
[https://plus.codes/5PJF+FJQ](https://plus.codes/5PJF+FJQ)

I think it's a nice concept though, I could see myself using something like
that if it became more mainstream, it's a little more convenient than GPS
coordinates if you want to meet with somebody in the wild or a large park for
instance.

Edit: oh, I got it, the tags at the bottom of the map are not the complete
one, they're "local" (you have to give the general location too like "5PJF+FJQ
Bayankhongor, Mongolia"). The full code is 8PR25PJF+FJ

~~~
farah9
It works if you append the plus code with a comma followed by the country
name.

~~~
IanCal
You may need a bit more than that, the shorter codes are only unique within
~100km.

------
angarg12
The first time that I went on vacation to Africa I was mindblown. The concept
of city, town or even village broke down for me; one of the places where I was
staying was just a streak of houses dispersed more or less close to a single
road. Addresses were hardly a thing, people just knew where each one lived, so
you had to ask for 'xyz house'.

I don't want to sound PC but this is the kind of reasons why more diversity
and breadth of life experiences is good for businesses.

~~~
liotier
> one of the places where I was staying was just a streak of houses dispersed
> more or less close to a single road

You were in America actually...

~~~
baud147258
That's not just in America, part of Europe can qualify too.

Except that they might have addresses.

~~~
majewsky
> Except that they might have addresses.

This reminds me of how when the German zip codes were unified in the 1990s,
they _forgot_ about one district.

> Although the Gutsbezirk Reinhardswald is officially uninhabitated, two
> people inhabit and operate the Tillyschanze restaurant, next to the
> observation tower of the same name above the city of Hann. Münden, located
> in Lower Saxony. The border between the states of Hesse and Lower Saxony
> runs between the restaurant and the observation tower. The territory has no
> postal code as it was forgotten about when the postal codes were assigned in
> 1993, as such no mail is delivered to the inhabitants.[2] The official
> address, as given by the authorities, is Tillyschanze 1, 00000
> Reinhardswald.[2]

Source:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutsbezirk_Reinhardswald](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutsbezirk_Reinhardswald)

~~~
Freak_NL
According to the German Wikipedia they finally got a post code (and mail
delivery!) in 2015¹:

    
    
        Bierweg 1, 34346, Hann. Münden.
    

Incidentally, that district apparently has a voter turn out of 100%; both
Reinhold and Marlies (the two inhabitants) seem to go out and vote when called
upon. I wonder if the voting results from that districts are published as-is
or grouped with the neighbouring district for anonymity?

1: [http://tillyschanze.de/kurioses/](http://tillyschanze.de/kurioses/)

------
netsharc
Ah, address fields, the mine-field of l10n.

Japanese addresses also have format not similar to US/European ones:
[http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/addresses.html](http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/addresses.html)

Google Contacts seems to solve this by just having a big textarea for you to
write your contact's addresses, and I guess showing that address in Google
Maps is done by just sending the whole thing as a query against their Maps
API.

------
rypskar
I don't know how many sites I have seen that require state, and some even have
a list of counties to select from. Last time I checked only USA, Australia,
Canada, China, Mexico and Malaysia use state in address. The other ~200
countries don't use it

------
neximo64
This article is a bit ignorant, typically one provides just a rough area and a
phone number so the courier can call and drop it off to you at home or at
work.

This is why you just need a suburb or area and your cell #. You need to be
available to sign for packages in African countries and they typically cannot
just be dropped off on the porch.

The problem with buying online is just the availability of things is poor, you
don't have an Amazon-esque level of availability & websites that do basically
buy from Amazon and sell it to you after an extenuating long timeframe.

Ordering from abroad is a hassle because of customs and duties and ridiculous
charges such as the SGR levy (for Uganda and Kenya) because of the new rail
line (even though the rail line isn't really used for your package). If you
order something small like shampoo its likely to cost triple and a minimum of
$30 from abroad.

The only great experience I've seen is from takealot. Jumia not so much. Kudos
to those guys who run Takealot.

For someone who has lived in Africa the address system, or lack thereof is
just something people are used to - it's still possible to find places without
an exact numerically marked address. It's likely a dedicated courier who is
very knowledgeable on the local areas & landmarks is to drop the package over
a postman so it makes little difference.

It's a bit of a shame when these type of articles come up once in a while that
distill a "sort of issue" into the prime issue on why it doesn't work. It's
not to say proper addresses would help alot, but it's certainly not the reason
e-commerce hasn't really taken off. The last time it was a discovery on how a
small fan can get rid of mosquitoes - obviously not the reality either.

~~~
gumby
> This article is a bit ignorant, typically one provides just a rough area and
> a phone number so the courier can call and drop it off to you at home or at
> work.

But isn’t that what the article says? That a structured address isn’t
appropriate and that other means (such as a pick up locator or, as you scribe
it, some level of coordination) is what the companies should be using instead?

------
Kluny
I'm betting Nicaragua has similar problems. I remember addresses that were
like, "From the third roundabout, take the first exit toward the lake, turn
left at Oliveo funeral home, take the second exit, fourth house on the left
(it's blue)."

No street names or numbers, and you have to know what "third roundabout" means
to even get started (there are three major roudnabouts in Managua, the third
one is the one closes to the lake. And "toward the lake" means "north". It's a
single word in Nicaraguan Spanish and it's used in place of the usual Spanish
word for "north".

~~~
Epenthesis
> "toward the lake" means "north"

Fascinating! Lake Nicaragua (which is what I'd naively assume a person in
Nicaragua would mean by "The Lake") is in the south of the country, so that's
really unintuitive.

Edit: OH, I see this is in Managua, which lies on the southern border of a
different lake. I guess it's like New Yorkers using "downtown" to mean "south"
(or rather, southwest)

~~~
Kluny
Right, only applicable in Managua! But Managua is the largest population
centre, so that covers a large percentage of the locals.

------
treerock
Seems like a problem that What3Words is trying to solve.

[https://what3words.com/partner/nipost/](https://what3words.com/partner/nipost/)

------
outworlder
Many years ago I was in Gibraltar and needed medical assistance (non-life
threatening but I was sick as heck). So I called my traveller insurance.

The british-sounding lady at the other end wanted a zip code. I didn't know of
any zip codes and looking at letters in the building's mailbox I could not see
anything looking like a zipcode.

She said she could not direct me to a 'nearby' hospital if she didn't have a
zip code.

Told her to just pick randomly, that took some convincing. How far could you
be from a hospital in Gibraltar anyway?

------
4ndrewl
Doesn't what 3 words already solve this problem, and seems to have commercial
momentum? [http://what3words.com](http://what3words.com)

~~~
staz
From previous conversations on HN, wasn't the problem that to use What3Words,
you have to use their online proprietary system? and thus won't work offline
and make you dependent on their service?

Plus Code seems to just be encoded Gps coordinates which seems far easier to
integrate.

~~~
tehwalrus
What3words works offline in a free (as in beer) app. They want to monetise by
charging the courier companies who save money in this precise case.

------
crooked-v
Always relevant to this kind of thing are the "falsehoods programmers believe
about X" lists: [https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-
falsehood](https://github.com/kdeldycke/awesome-falsehood)

~~~
contingencies
Came to share this too. Actually, I ran in to a new one the other day and just
emailed the Address Falsehoods guy about it: _Town /city names are non-
numeric_: There is an Australian town called '1770'. The locals have taken to
writing 'Seventeen Seventy' as a government-cajoled workaround.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_with_numeric_na...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_with_numeric_names)

------
JeanMarcS
In France (don’t know how it works elsewhere) shops can be a shipping point.
It creates a network for transporters and it’s a must have for any online
shop.

If the transporter ships directly to your home, you have to be here when he
comes (and in France you never really know...).

If you haven’t bought large furniture or fridge or whatever, it’s simpler to
go to a shop, it’s open on a wide range of hours.

For the shop owner, it can be a good deal as, well, you are in his/her shop.

~~~
kaybe
You can just make post offices hold mail for you until you come by with
identification. Great for travelling!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poste_restante](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poste_restante)

~~~
JeanMarcS
Well... where I live, the post office is opened from 9am to 12pm and from 2pm
to 4pm. On Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Only in the morning for
Wednesday.

I desperately try to send something since Monday. Without success.

------
Macha
In Ireland we only recently got postcodes. The reason was not because the
postal service or delivery companies needed them - in fact An Post (national
postal service) explicitly said they did not.

Instead it's because:

a) enough online shops assume you have one b) advertising mail providers
needed it

Frankly if physical spammers need it, then that's an argument against having
it to me, and it's sad that online shops forced this by just assuming we had
them :(

~~~
rwallace
I'm glad we finally got postcodes. Now I don't have to waste energy getting
pissed off with that defect in online forms any more, and it presumably adds
an extra layer of redundancy, a bit more reduction in the probability of a
package being mis-delivered.

------
gcb0
haha. great irony: the medium.com site showed me a page with a google captcha.
I clicked it, and it asked me to identify cars or something. so I just hit the
back button, left this comment and realised I did not have to read such a
click baity titled article.

I guess captcha before showing an ad-ridden site is 70% of the reason I don't
read bad articles. thanks medium-google-cloudflare.

~~~
Const-me
Probably, internets detected malware or spam coming from your IP. Check there:
[https://whatismyipaddress.com/blacklist-
check](https://whatismyipaddress.com/blacklist-check)

~~~
jstanley
(Not the person you're replying to, but) Thanks for the link. I get CAPTCHA's
all the time and it turns out my IP address is in the spfbl.net blacklist. Now
to work out how to get taken off it...

~~~
Const-me
You’re welcome.

My current ISP doesn’t provide me a public IP address, so I’m sharing the IP
with other clients of that ISP. A month ago I also noticed captchas on google
and cloudflare. Because half of the internets use cloudflare that was kinda
noticeable.

I’ve searched a bit, found the cause (and a bunch of black list checks
resources). I’ve e-mailed my ISP describing the issue and linking to that
check page, they did something and the problem went away.

If you’re the sole user of your IP address, check the detection details. Some
of these honeypots/black lists even tell you what exact malware they think is
likely to cause the trouble. Then scan/update your computers (all of them that
are using that IP address), and wait a bit. AFAIK, if the spam stops coming
from that IP, their entries expire after a while, probably days or weeks.

------
Lordarminius
This might be a component, but it is not the real reason why online shopping
is behind in Africa. That would be because purchasing power is low, exchange
rates are high, and most companies don't trust the system enough to ship to
Africa - even for products with relatively high demand.

Many e-commerce companies operate in my country Nigeria and I have never heard
that their major complaint centered on valid shipping addresses. The problem
exists true,but it is a relatively unimportant one. DHL, FEDEX and other
couriers whose principal business is delivery of goods are doing just fine
last time I checked.

Purchasing power and disposable income are low across the continent and for
those reasons I am personally bearish about the prospects of e-commerce in
Africa in the medium term.

------
sharemywin
How does mail carriers deliver packages? what do they use?

~~~
crispyambulance
That becomes the real question if websites accept plus-codes as valid shipping
addresses.

How will you know whether or not a mail-system in a remote location will even
know what a plus code is, and then, be equipped with that technology on an
individual carrier basis?

Are these just pie-in-the-sky proposals or are people using them now?

------
theBobBob
Kind of had the same issue with post/zip codes for Ireland as up until very
recently we didn't have them. I remember it was annoying when companies with
their European head quarters in Ireland and they had mandatory post code
fields in their forms. I even knew some people that had some issues opening
bank accounts in the UK because it was mandatory in the computer system that
the teller was using and they had to get a manager to work around it for them.

~~~
snausages
Yes I vaguely recall having to enter a bunch of 0's in fields (when they were
permissive enough to accept that).

~~~
itsmenotyou
I still write 'none' in any postcode fields, and am refusing to learn my
eircode. I've never had a problem getting things delivered

~~~
brimstedt
May I ask why?

As an outsider (and someone who knows nothing about you/your culture) this
sounds like "I don't want to accept change" or "noone is going to force stupid
codes on to me". So id love to hear the reason!

~~~
everyone
Seconded. I'm also Irish and the new postcodes are the ultimate in clarity
imo. Each dwelling/unit has one code, and each code represents one
dwelling/unit.

I live in quite a remote spot, so before, my address was just my name + the
general area I live. Thats fine for the postman who knows where I live, but I
dont know how other delivery services figured out where I was. Also I'm pretty
much at the centroid of 3 towns, and different services would route deliveries
via different towns. I had to learn through trial and error to put 'via X' or
'via Y' as my address depending on what service I was using.

Eircode clears all that up.

------
tehwalrus
Much maligned on Hacker News though it is, this is precisely the killer
application that what3words is good for.

It works offline on cheap android devices with GPS for discovery, which can
also be done with a satellite map. Directions via an intent into another app
with nav is now built into the main apps.

In fact, it's already used for doctors finding women in labour in improvised
settlements in South Africa.

Disclosure: former employee, who wishes them all the luck in the world getting
people to use it!

~~~
GFischer
Why is it maligned? First time I run across it. Sounds interesting, and being
accepted by Google Maps is great.

~~~
tehwalrus
See some of the other comments on this thread. The algorithm isn't open
source, seems to be the main (valid) criticism.

------
trs80
The solution he's proposing is good because GPS is an accurate model for
finding an exact location on Earth. Prior to GPS humans came up with models
for describing specific locations by abstracting land mass into regions and
sub regions and so on until we finally arrive at a person's house number or
box. Why did not Africa? This is a question I ask myself but I guess it
doesn't matter in the end as we should all soon be moving to GPS in the future
anyway. This would be a difficult jump for Africa to make but it might
actually be easier starting with a blank slate that they have. Imagine trying
to move the USA to a GPS based system? Unlike Canada our zip codes alone are
not accurate enough to find a precise mailbox location. We still require
street number and street name. If we made the move to GPS, our legacy systems
would still need to be supported, whereas Africa never had these legacy
systems in the first place.

~~~
Matt_Mickiewicz
[https://what3words.com](https://what3words.com) = 3 words that map to
specific GPS location anywhere in the world is intended to solve for this.

------
kanyawwah
This is an issue in Myanmar too. There are businesses in Yangon that provide
ship-to locations for a fee (and usually place the orders on behalf of their
customers as well since most don't have access to electronic payments). I've
never seen the pulse.codes system in real life, but it looks like a very
elegant solution.

Also, on the subject of online forms, a major source of annoyance/confusion is
the ubiquitous first name/last name fields (most people in Myanmar have just
one name since family names aren't a thing). Some split their name in half to
fill the two fields, which as you can imagine doesn't work very well when
formatted as "last name, first name" or Mr. Last Name, etc.. :-)

------
gumby
This triggers a more general hot button for me. Computers should be there to
help,people, not the other way around.

The rigidity of street addresses is relatively new (within living memory)and
was designed to accommodate a technological gap (paper maps, basically, and
emergency services).

It’s more humane to let people specify things like addresses the way they want
(my grandmother refused to kowtow to the imposition of numerical street
addresses and continued to use her house name until the day she died).

This is like the Spanish Academy changing the alphabetic sorting rules in the
1990s because crufty PCs had trouble with ch and ll — and then shortly
thereafter they became fast enough!

~~~
nradov
This isn't really a matter of computers helping or not helping people. The
issue is with the delivery service. They need some reliable way to find the
right destination.

~~~
gumby
My reading of the article is quite different from yours. The author writes,

> I can only tell you that I live in Kanyanya, a Kampala suburb. If you need
> my exact home, then I’ll either have to send you a GPS location via apps
> like Whatsapp, Telegram, Google Maps or engage you in a long phone
> conversation in which I’ll try to describe landmarks, building and trees
> leading to my house. But street address, zip code? Hell No.

And says that despite that, the web forms ask for nonsensical data. The right
thing is for the delivery location validator to take GPS, phone number, list
of landmarks, etc, canonicalize it as best it can, and send that info to the
delivery company. Not try to fit the delivery info into some Procrustean form.

~~~
Leader2light
That is all much more cost intensive. Think of a delivery guy trying to sort
through all that crap. List of landmarks? What a joke.

~~~
gumby
That’s what we pay them for. And there’s no reason why waze or maps couldn’t
use landmarks for navigation.

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krsdcbl
I recall this amazing project, that aimed at simplifying gps locations even
further:

[https://what3words.com](https://what3words.com)

(Admittedly, its not very useful for location funneling)

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cimnine
This reminded me of the TED talk "A Precise Three Word Address for Every Place
on Earth" [1]. I guess (and this has been mentioned in other comments) the
systems he's referring to is known commercially as what3words [2].

[1]:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_sheldrick_a_precise_three_wo...](https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_sheldrick_a_precise_three_word_address_for_every_place_on_earth)

[2]: [http://what3words.com/](http://what3words.com/)

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buyx
Africa is huge, complex and diverse. Gross generalizations about “Africa” even
when made by Africans are not particularly useful, and mask the local problems
that stymie development.

As an example, because of private courier companies, South Africa has a
thriving online shopping scene, despite the South African Post Office becoming
a shambles in recent years due to mismanagement. Addresses are not a huge
problem for the sorts of people who would shop online in SA.

Africa is not a country, it’s a continent.

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starchild_3001
This is a stupid article with a stupid title. Those who wish to sell items to
those countries would do their research and consider this problem. If they
don’t solve it, it’s because they don’t want to deal with all the mess of
international shipping to a country without proper addresses.

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pjc50
Making a population "legible" is one of the functions of a state, for good or
ill.

[https://c4ss.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/James-
Scott.pdf](https://c4ss.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/James-Scott.pdf)

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lagadu
plus.codes seems like an interesting idea, as far as I can tell it's only
encoding gps coordinates in a more human-readable format (does your gps use
degrees, minutes and seconds; degrees and decimal minutes; decimal degrees or
something more exotic like UTM coordinates?). Unfortunately as far as I can
tell only google maps supports it. I tried putting it on two common mapping
apps: tomtom mydrive and here maps and neither would accept it, I'm 100% sure
my car will also look at me funny if I ever tried to use it.

Lack of adoption effectively functions as vendor lock-in :(

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baud147258
On pick-up point: "I think this is an innovative approach to this problem."

Well, a pick-up point is not something that's really innovative and is not
something that's only useful in Africa.

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tantalor
"no-brainer... innovative"

These are opposites. Which is it? Pick one.

~~~
marcosdumay
Well, how does "stuff people have been using for millennia (literally) when
faced with the same problem" fit?

Developed countries haven't always been as developed as they are now.

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thescribe
Services that rely on post-industrial infrastructure don't work without post-
industrial infrastructure.

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jasonmaydie
Or he could just go to his local post office and get a box and ship it there.

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golergka
Ironic that this article comes out at the same time so many people on the
internet are getting angry about "shithole" remark.

~~~
Jorenby
The lack of standard address system does not make a place a shithole.

