Recently updated on September 7th, 2019 at 10:43 am
The Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) has been awarded the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) 2018 Prize in the category of e-Employment for the NIPOST Address Verification System (NIPOST AVS).
Post Master General Bisi Adegbuyi received the Award at the WSIS Forum 2018 in Geneva, marking the 15th anniversary of the World Summit on the Information Society Forum.
NIPOST was selected as one of the finalists of the WSIS Prizes contest for 2018. The finalists, known as World Summit on the Information Society Champions, represent the top 90 projects selected from a record-breaking 492 nominated projects.
In a release by NIPOST Media Officer, Mr Franklin Alao, the NIPOST AVS project, recognised as a WSIS Champion, seeks to create a centralised and up-to-date database of physical addresses and the details of their occupants to bridge gaps in the nation’s national financial inclusion strategy, empower the CBN’s KYC, and improve national security infrastructure, while creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in a commercially sustainable manner.
The World Summit on the Information Society Prizes is a global initiative recognising innovative projects using information and communication technologies, ICTs, to better the world.
Since 2012, the prestigious WSIS Prizes contest has been recognising remarkable efforts made by entities and organisations from around the globe that focus on accelerating socio-economic progress of the whole world as a community.
The World Summit on the Information Society Champions represents all regions of the world, and all stakeholders, and are recognised as stellar models of using ICTs towards implementation of the WSIS Action Lines and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs.
Eighteen winners were announced from the 90 finalists, and together, all World Summit on the Information Society Prizes Winners and WSIS Prizes Champions were honoured at the event.
Each winner was recognized as the best in each of the 18 prize categories, which are aligned with the 18 WSIS Action Lines outlined in the Geneva Plan of Action. The WSIS Prizes submission phase, which ran from 11 September, 2017 to 10 January, 2018, received a record 685 project submissions, out of which 492 exceptional projects were nominated. Close to one million online votes were cast, from 29 January to 18 February, for the nominated projects, from which 90 extraordinary initiatives were selected as the finalists – the WSIS Prizes 2018 Champions, after a comprehensive review by the Expert Group.
