Comment by petertodd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by petertodd | Hacker News Reader

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I've done some military charity work in Ukraine, getting donations from people in my community and ensuring that money gets turned into vehicles and equipment reaching soldiers that I personally know in Eastern Ukraine. Just a small "hobby" really, not on a big scale; I'm certainly not a charity professional.

On multiple occasions I've shipped things with the Nova Poshta service to units very close to the front line. In some cases they're getting picked up at Nova Poshta shipping outlets so close to the front lines that FPV drones are a genuine risk.

It just works. Nova Poshta has a nice app. There's complete and accurate tracking, you can easily redirect shipments on the fly to different locations and even different people, and they have package lockers everywhere. The staff are very friendly and go above and beyond to help out. I once showed up at a Kyiv branch with four used truck tires covered with mud, without any packaging, and said I needed to get them to a unit in Sloviansk, a town 20kms from the front lines. They handled everything for me for the equivalent of ~$30 and they showed up the next day.

If Ukraine can manage shipping at scale in the middle of a war, WTF is Africa doing? Why do you have to rely on sketchy shit like trusting random airline passengers getting some extra cash on the side? You can't have a modern economy without good shipping services.

I'm reminded of the time I visited both Kyiv and South Africa in Febuary 2024... Cape Town and Johannesburg had more scheduled blackouts than Kyiv, even with Russia actively trying to destroy the electricity grid. The GDP/capita of South Africa is higher than Ukraine!

Technology isn't the problem - African developers produce apps just fine. It isn't even local logistics - addresses are being deployed in major cities, and alternative processes work fine elsewhere. The problem is rule of law, or lack thereof.

Rule of law is critical infrastructure.

Also, South Africa isn't sub-Saharan Africa.

> The problem is rule of law, or lack thereof. Rule of law is critical infrastructure.

I agree 100%

> Also, South Africa isn't sub-Saharan Africa.

Indeed. Which made me even less impressed by my example of power outages. South Africa clearly has a massive political problem with corruption; they have the money and technology to keep the power on.

The details are interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eskom#Corruption

South Africa is in Africa and south of the Sahara and usually qualifies.

Culturally it's a mix. There are a bunch of people from black African areas who are culturally African and then a bunch originating from Holland and England who are culturally European. It's changed a bit as to which lot run different things.

Nova Poshta is a perfect example of free market doing what it is supposed to do and they even forced the actual state owned post company to get their shit together to compete.

Delivering to frontline towns is on brand for them as much as delivering from Amazon with a proxy address in US. They make things happen

Ukraine has put a lot of effort into combating corruption, ans a war going on does tend to focus things. But it is generally true that a situation where 'by the book' doesn't work is corrosive and should generally result in some effort to bring the book and reality back into sync (Generally I think the book should be what's changed, but if bring reality into the light by putting it into the book reveals something unacceptable then that should also be changed).

Nova Poshta is a logistical provider for the gray economy, not exactly an example of doing things by the book. They grew big on internal market in a niche where you aren't exposed to much of the bribing (no customs clearance) and expanded to international shipping when they already had a reputation.

Thank you for your help, I think you already know how much people in Ukraine appreciate it.

But comparing Ukraine and African countries is more like apple and oranges.

Ukraine is by large a European country which culturally is much more similar to Poland or even UK.

Because it was always portrayed in the west as corrupt or insignificant was just more caused by living under soviet or russian shadow than a reality.

Nova Poshta was already an established business well before 2022 war started, but even without it, government-owned Ukrposhta was always rock solid going decades back. Theft was happening ocasionally by workers but at a rate comparable to any other western country. DHL, FedEx was operating also for a very long time and the biggest problem with them was the need to pay the import duty tax on expensive items, which you can avoid when shipping with Ukrposhta.

> WTF is Africa doing?

Exactly what Ukraine was doing before the war, only more of it. A mixture of low level corruption, kleptocracy and outright feudalism.

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