Takeaways from the Third Arab Postal Leaders' Forum: turning postal networks into data networks

The Third Arab Postal Leaders' Forum, held in Rabat on 23–24 June 2026, was organised by the Universal Postal Union (UPU) in cooperation with Poste Maroc. It gathered ministers, postal CEOs, regulators and private-sector experts under the theme "Transforming Postal Supply Chains and Digital Trade Networks for an E-Commerce Driven Future." It was opened by Morocco's Minister of Industry and Commerce, H.E. Ryad Mezzour, with keynotes from Poste Maroc CEO Ahmed Benjelloun and, remotely, UPU Director General Masahiko Metoki. 

Across the two days, and particularly on the panel on AI, data and the future of logistics intelligence,  where I presented the connectivity and market intelligence perspective from GSMA Intelligence, the clearest signal was how far the conversation has shifted. The question is no longer whether Arab postal operators should transform, that debate is settled. It is how quickly they can do it, and crucially, whether they can do it together. Operators once judged on moving hand written letters reliably must now compete on parcels, logistics and cross-border trade to survive. 

The urgency, in two numbers 

The strategic backdrop is two data points pulling in opposite directions. The first is demand: e-commerce in the Middle East and North Africa is expanding from roughly $34.5 billion in 2024 towards an estimated $57.8 billion by 2029 (Digital Commerce 360). The second is capture: UPU's State of the Postal Sector 2024 shows international parcel and small packet volumes were down roughly 60% from 2019 peak with volume diverting to non postal e-commerce, even as domestic parcel volumes exceeded 40 billion in 2024. The demand is there, but postal operators aren’t capturing thus necessitating a full digital transformation for them to survive. 

The connectivity layer is already built 

A central message was that the digital infrastructure to transform Arab postal services already exists, and ther’s no need to build from scratch. GSMA Intelligence's Mobile Economy MENA 2025 estimates 308 million people across the region are on mobile internet today, about 46% of the population. Mobile contributed around $350 billion to regional GDP in 2024, some 5.7% of the total. 5G will grow from about 7% of connections in 2024 to close to half by 2030. Licensed cellular IoT connections are forecast at roughly 80 million by 2030, close to double the 2023 base, and 86% of the region's operators now offer IoT commercially. Real-time tracking, connected vehicles and handheld scanning all need pervasive mobile data and affordable IoT all is now in place and all they need is to tap into this layer of infrastructure. 

Postal services are extraordinary data-generating networks 

A modern postal service is literally a data-generating network, not merely a logistics flow. It holds a country's addressing layer, reaches households and businesses of every size, and generates a data trail with every parcel it moves. In a digitaleconomy the parcel is basically a data object, carrying identity, payment and delivery information. Operators that connect those three layers of data can engage customers the way digital platforms do. 

AI in postal services 

The AI discussion was practical, centred on concrete use cases rather than headline breakthroughs. Enterprise AI adoption in the region is no longer experimental: GSMA Intelligence's November 2025 survey of 851 MENA enterprises found 39% already in advanced use of generative AI, with transport and logistics slightly ahead at 41% and those are expected to spend around 9.8% of annual revenue on digital transformation through 2030, with AI being the largest budget line. McKinsey estimates AI-driven forecasting cuts errors by 30–50%. Regional proof exist too: UPU case study work on Saudi Post documents AI based address validation and customs pre-clearance cutting merchant onboarding from around two months to two or three days, with delivery success near 98%. 

So the real question now is whether operators have the clean, governed data to feed AI and the clear use cases to apply AI. Data quality, systems integration and organisational readiness are the real constraints, and  the discussion on AI adoption kept returning to cybersecurity, data governance and interoperability as prerequisites, not afterthoughts. 

The case for partnerships: build together, not from scratch 

A recurring theme was how operators should acquire these capabilities and it was broadly shared that they should not build them alone. Telecom operators already hold real time network and mobility data, and increasingly the edge and AI services to act on it, they can also supply cellular IoT, device management and combined terrestrial-satellite coverage for distributed assets. GSMA Open Gateway offers live, standardised access to capabilities such as identity verification and fraud prevention. The lesson telecoms learned the hard way applies directly here as well: value lies more in owning the customer relationship than in owning infrastructure. 

The cross-border prize 

The commercial opportunity that surfaced most often was cross-border e-commerce. Postal networks are uniquely placed to connect micro, small and medium-sized enterprises to regional and global markets provided the data and coordination are in place. 

Conclusions 

The Forum's strongest message was a call to stop thinking nationally. The region remains a patchwork of fragmented networks, the ambition in Rabat was an integrated Arab logistics ecosystem: regional corridors, multimodal partnerships, deeper customs cooperation and interoperable systems. Sitting at the crossroads of Asia, Africa and Europe, the region is an underused asset with interconnected postal networks that could function as connected logistics hubs rather than isolated endpoints.