Botswana Post Address Validation

Botswana Post has a rich heritage of around 150 years and is tied to the London Missionary Society. It is the center of commerce, communication, and economic inclusion nationwide. The postal service delivers around 13,847,587 million mail items annually with decent accuracy. However, delivery mistakes could still happen, considering the vast geographical region and complex postal addressing system. 

How do we resolve this issue of deliverability and lost mail? Can businesses operating in Botswana avoid late deliveries and optimize their mailing costs? This blog will be the perfect read for understanding everything about Botswana Post address validation, its problems, better alternatives, and the country’s official address format.

Key Takeaways 

• An address validation tool is critical to reduce delivery errors and shipping costs. 
• Mistakes in the Botswana city and street names can make your mailings undeliverable. 
• A high percentage of Botswana’s addresses are in rural areas. 
• Most rural addresses rely on a plot number system and landmarks. 
• You cannot validate or standardize addresses with Botswana Post address validation tools. 
• Businesses need a reliable third-party address validation tool to improve deliverability.

Invalid or Incomplete Postal Address 

Most Botswanan citizens and businesses receive mail and packages via P.O. Boxes instead of street addresses. This can create confusion among individuals and companies sending shipments from other countries. Mistakes in the city or street name will make your mailings undeliverable. The postal workers can’t fix such errors in the address line. Many people often leave the addresses incomplete due to a lack of information. This only creates confusion among the postal workers and might misdeliver your mail to another location or recipient. 

The Address in a Rural Area 

70% of Botswana is in the Kalahari Desert, meaning most addresses are in rural areas. Many villages and communities in the country don’t have proper street names or numbers for easier identification. They are highly dependent on landmarks, villages, and recipient names. Some people aren’t even able to receive mail at home. They register for P.O. Box services to retrieve mail at the nearest post office or service outlet. All these factors make rural addressing highly challenging, reducing deliverability and leading to customer dissatisfaction. 

The Recipient is Absent at the Delivery Point 

This is one of the most unfortunate reasons behind failed delivery and returned mail. The intended recipient could be away during the delivery attempt. In such cases, Botswana Post reattempts the delivery twice or thrice. The recipients must also retrieve the mailers from the local collection center if they are absent during these attempts. Businesses should constantly contact the recipients and track their packages during the mailing process. It prevents the chances of costly reshipping and lost parcels. 

The Address is Obsolete 

People often relocate to Botswana’s capital or other urban cities for better opportunities. If you don’t update addresses regularly, your database can become obsolete. Many businesses lose revenue by attempting to deliver to the old address. Postal workers can’t recognize their new address if the recipient doesn’t register for change-of-address services, making it even harder to provide things to the correct address. 

No Uniform or Standardized Address Format 

Botswana addresses have an officially accepted sequence and abbreviations. Senders can’t write the addresses in their own way, as they must conform to the Botswana Post standards. The absence of this uniformity might cause your mail or packages to reach different recipients. Only a reliable address validation tool can reformat such addresses and follow the official standards. 

• Abbreviations: Botswana Post uses multiple abbreviations to highlight address elements. For example, “P.O. Box” for Post Office Box, “Blk” for block, “Nr.” for number, “Twn” for town, etc. 
• Alignment: All Botswanan addresses are left-aligned for better readability and postal processing. 
• Language: English is the official language of Botswana and is used to address domestic and international mailings. 
• Village Addressing: Most rural addresses rely on a plot number system and landmarks, complicating delivery routes. 
• Postal Codes: Botswana does not use traditional postal codes. Instead, the country heavily relies on P.O. Box numbers to ensure accurate sorting and delivery. Each post office is a regional hub that delivers mail and packages nationwide.

A typical Botswanan postal address comprises four lines. You begin by writing the recipient’s full name with the appropriate titles for the region. The following line mentions the building number and street name. List them in this sequence without using any separating punctuation. Use the third line to include the city where the recipient resides.  Botswana doesn’t use postal codes like other countries, so you’ll use the last line to write BWA as a shortened form of the country name. 

Here is what the format should look like: 

Your sample address would look like this: 

Lack of Address Validation Capabilities 

The postal service doesn’t provide a publicly available database or tool for address verification. However, they are still trying to develop an in-house addressing system to provide this facility to users. We will update this blog once that happens. You’d need a third-party tool to verify Botswanan addresses against authoritative and credible sources. It can benefit you tremendously by reducing shipping costs and improving customer experience. 

No Standardization or Autocomplete Features 

Botswana Post can’t help you standardize addresses automatically according to their officially accepted format. If you avoid standardizing your database, mistakes will remain in your building number, street, and city name sequence. Reformatting is critical to help postal workers sort and deliver your mail efficiently to the correct recipient. You can’t gamble on using incorrect formatting and expect the country’s postal service to make the delivery. 

Businesses Can’t Validate Addresses in Bulk 

Every business operating on a global level handles thousands of customers. They can’t dedicate individual resources to validate and standardize each address manually. It would take days and a lot of overhead costs. Unfortunately, you don’t get any bulk validation capabilities with Botswana Post to save time. Only an API-driven solution can help you validate multiple records simultaneously by uploading database files. It must be easy to validate thousands of addresses in seconds. 

Absence of Geocoding Data 

A Boston postal address is only an approximation of the actual location. Predicting the geographical area requires more insights. Sadly, the country’s official postal service doesn’t provide geocoding data (longitude and latitude) to help you pinpoint addresses on a map. It is also a direct roadblock to data mapping, location analytics, and business intelligence. Consider an innovative tool like PostGrid with rooftop and reverse geocoding features. 

No Integrations are Available for Custom Workflows

Even if Botswana Post releases a dedicated address validation tool, it won’t be helpful for businesses if it lacks integration capabilities. These integrations are vital to help firms create custom workflows for address validation tasks. For example, an ecommerce company would want to validate direct addresses from checkout forms, reducing churn and errors. It saves the hassle of checking each address manually against a credible database. However, Botswana hasn’t yet provided any address validation tools or integrations. 

As mentioned above, Botswana Post doesn’t provide any address validation capabilities to help individuals or businesses improve deliverability. It leaves you uncertain whether your recipient will receive your mail or package. A global company cannot take such risks when sending sensitive mailings or high-value shipments. 

PostGrid’s Address Validation API could be a comprehensive solution for validating, standardizing, and autocompleting Bostwanan addresses at scale. It improves deliverability, brings up-to-date records, and eliminates returns. We validate in real-time against multiple credible data sources to ensure accuracy. You can also use our ZERO code integrations to combine the API with your tech stack for custom workflows and efficiency. Geocoding addresses is also possible with our precise validation techniques. It gives better location analytics for each Botswanan address. Use the scalable system to handle millions of API calls in a minute without bottlenecks.