A lot of countries in Africa do not have addressing systems and there is a push to have them adopt these granular forms of addressing for e-commerce and government service delivery. But existing addressing systems are structured to precisely link occupants to specific identity. I am reading more on this and would appreciate any leads.
I’m not sure if addressing systems are compatible with privacy at all. I don’t see how they could be.
In the countries you speak of, is there no mail service at present? Or is it one of those cases where the towns are small enough that you can just put the person’s name and town on a letter and it will get where it’s going because everyone in the town knows where everyone else lives? I know the latter system is used in some rural areas in Europe. And that doesn’t seem particularly private either, since it relies on all your neighbors knowing exactly who you are and where to find you.
That is the claimed dilemma – how do you facilitate e-commerce and government service delivery without reliable location precision.
I think it is a good thing that such addressing systems do not exist in some of these countries but the reality is that their non-existence is not a conscious decision to uphold privacy but rather an institutional delay to implement them. The pandemic seems to have revitalized the need to have national addressing systems. My worry is that they may get too invasive compared to existing ones since they may be linked digitally to more characteristics at the point of initial addressing.
Postal services are popular but not as active in e-commerce. The government uses them now for service delivery (renewing documents etc).