Ivory Coast has adopted a new system of postal addresses that contain three words. It means that for the first time , everyone in the country will be able to receive mail to their house or . Up until now, people had to rely on post office . There were only 150,000 of these and people had to rent them, which meant poorer people found it difficult to receive mail. The of Ivory Coast's post office told the BBC: "We have 150,000 PO boxes for a of nearly 24 million. That means a postal address is a luxury in Ivory Coast. We have to make postal available to everyone." He said the three-word addresses would move Ivory Coast into the digital .
The Ivory Coast's new postal system is based on the what3words.com -mapping system. Its software has divided the world into a of 57 trillion 3m x 3m , each assigned a 3-word address. The software uses latitude and longitude coordinates to precisely pinpoint a on a global address network. The 22 numbers from these are converted into three easy to remember words that replace house numbers, street and city names and codes. A what3words.com spokesperson said: "Poor might seem no more than annoying in some countries, but around the world, it hampers the and development of nations, ultimately costing ."
