Kenya’s seat at the UN agency for global postal services is pure irony

If you grew up in the 90s, you know just how mighty Posta Kenya once was. Brightly painted buildings, the proud red logo, the long queues of people clutching letters and brown envelopes—it was the beating heart of communication. Fast-forward to 2025, and what’s left? Walk around any small town today and those same buildings look like haunted houses. Paint peeling. Roofs caving in. Some branches abandoned entirely, waiting for history students to declare them colonial ruins. And yet, here we are: Kenya has been re-elected to the Postal Operations Council (POC) of the Universal Postal Union (UPU), the UN agency for global postal services.

Yes, you read that right. Kenya, whose own national postal operator can barely deliver on time without a miracle, is sitting at the very table where postal standards for the whole world are being decided. If this isn’t the definition of irony, I don’t know what is.

A council seat for what exactly?

Don’t get me wrong. Representation matters. Kenya’s presence on the council is no small deal. The Communications Authority (CA) made a great deal about it, with Cabinet Secretary William Kabogo waxing lyrical about “a trusted pair of hands” and Kenya’s 61 years of leadership credentials in postal affairs. But pause. Trusted pair of hands? The same Posta Kenya whose biggest innovation in the past year is hiking prices for its virtual addresses (MPost), driving away the very people it was meant to attract?

And it gets funnier (or sadder, depending on how patriotic you feel): according to CA’s own data, private courier firms handled 17 times more domestic parcels than Posta between January and March this year. Seventeen times! While G4S, Fargo, and even Glovo riders are zipping around town with real-time tracking and customer support, Posta is still asking you to fill in a carbon-copy slip and wait for SMS notifications that may or may not arrive.

So why is Kenya being rewarded with another four-year term at the UPU’s top table? Is the bar this low across the continent that even our crumbling system still looks shiny in Geneva? Or is this one of those “do as I say, not as I do” gigs where Kenya talks global leadership abroad while Posta Kenya struggles to keep the lights on at home?

Posta’s fall from grace

Let’s not sugarcoat it. The numbers are brutal:

• Domestic letters down 82% in just one quarter.
• International incoming letters down 95%.
• Domestic parcels down 75%.

Meanwhile, private couriers are eating Posta’s lunch and its dinner. The only thing Posta seems to be excelling at is sending parcels abroad, up nearly 478% in March 2025. Translation? Kenyans trust Posta only when DHL is too expensive.

Add to this the government’s recent crackdown on “unlicensed courier services,” as though choking innovation will magically resuscitate Posta. It’s like trying to fix a Nokia 3310 with an iPhone repair manual. The economy has moved on. Posta hasn’t.

And yet, there’s a poetic quality to Kenya being re-elected to the UPU council. It’s like awarding a “Best Chef” trophy to someone whose restaurant closed down years ago but who still shows up at food conferences talking about recipes. Sure, they may have experience, but would you trust them with your wedding catering?

Kenya, it seems, has perfected the art of looking good abroad while fumbling at home. We’ll sit at the UPU, nodding sagely about digital transformation and e-commerce integration, while back in Eldoret, someone’s waiting three weeks for a parcel to arrive from Nairobi.

Maybe there’s an upside. Maybe Kenya’s re-election is a chance to finally align what we preach internationally with what we practice domestically. Posta doesn’t need nostalgia; it needs reinvention. Imagine a Posta that works like Glovo, integrates with e-commerce, and offers financial services that actually compete with M-PESA. Imagine not cringing when you walk past your local post office.

Until then, the irony remains. Kenya is at the high table of global postal operations, deciding the future of mail, while at home, Posta Kenya is barely delivering on the present. But for the sake of the kids growing up now, I hope one day Posta Kenya can match the lofty speeches its leaders are giving in Dubai.