Shaping a Brighter Future for the Global South with SnooCODE

In many parts of the world, a proper addressing system is taken for granted. In reality, zip codes (or postcodes), street names and house numbers facilitate everything from delivery of mail to emergency response. In Africa and many parts of the Global South however, the lack of comprehensive addressing systems creates significant challenges, affecting various sectors like banking, eCommerce, logistics, and governance.

Honouring today’s International Day of Science, Technology and Innovation for the South (themed “Shaping a Brighter Future for the Global South”), allow us to tell you a bit about our Science, Technology and Innovation in addressing for the Global South and beyond.

SnooCODE is a digital addressing system that enables anybody anywhere on Earth to have a memorable 5-7-digit address code unique to their location, e.g. Monrovia 499-HGV. Founder, Sesinam Dagadu, was inspired to create SnooCODE years ago as an intern at a popular bank in Accra, Ghana, after experiencing first-hand the difficulty in locating customers – did you know some banks in Africa, as recently as the time of writing, still require people to draw maps to their homes showing the closest landmarks in order to open an account?

You’ll have an even better picture of why not to take a well-designed addressing system for granted if you’ve read our last blog post about our colleague missing a meeting in New York from a common zipcode address error…

It affects all, from the individual to the household to the macroeconomy. Living in Africa for instance means your country’s banks are automatically considered risky, because people do not have zip codes. As explained excellently in this short interview of Access Bank Chairman, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, “if your credit score process requires a zip code, all of a sudden, he's not good for credit.”

He goes on to state, “there are actually fewer and fewer African banks that are members of the international Global Payments Community... Now if you're a bank and you're not in that clearing system, you've got to apply to a UK bank you may be even bigger than to make your payment, and so you're routing through that bank. That bank then demands that you show evidence that all your customers have zip codes, etc, and if they don't, then of course, I'm going to label your payments in a certain way, so a payment coming from somewhere in Africa is deemed immediately of a higher risk status than a payment coming from a country that is more compliant based on global standards.”

To be fair, we cannot really fault the international banks and finance organisations too much for these standards – what good is a database of bank customers living “2 junctions after the big cocount tree behind the Presbyterian Church,” or on “Senator Johnson Street,” which exists in 3 different neighbourhoods in the city where Senator Johnson has bought a property?

We can’t help but borrow more of Mr. Aig-Imouhhuede’s words:

“At the end of the day, if you really think about the 1.6 billion Africans who are basically excluded from payment systems – excluded from the ability to just participate as global citizens it's really unfair, because they don't deserve it and the risk weighting attached to them is not true, but then it's the hand we’ve been dealt.

Africa will solve its problems when it starts producing in Africa.”

SnooCODE is a product made in Africa by Africans to enable all individuals, businesses and governments in the Global South to participate as global citizens, be it in Banking, eCommerce, Logistics, Science, Technology or Innovation.