Realising the potential of smart cities in Africa

Many cities in Africa are edg­ing towards a cross­roads. Unprece­dent­ed demo­graph­ic changes are fun­da­men­tal­ly reshap­ing urban spaces across the con­ti­nent and strain­ing the already over­bur­dened infra­struc­ture of large conur­ba­tions. 

Smart cities that can embrace the ben­e­fits of dig­i­tal inno­va­tion and pass these on to their cit­i­zens have long been viewed as a pow­er­ful tool to improve urban life. But will they live up to this promise or could they fur­ther ingrain socioe­co­nom­ic inequities?

There’s no ques­tion that smart cities will play a role in the future of urban­i­sa­tion in Africa. But it’s up to local and nation­al gov­ern­ment lead­ers to decide how their con­cepts are used. 

Robert Ver­steeg, a con­sul­tant with Smart City Con­sul­tants, believes that the tech­nol­o­gy should fit around the ambi­tions of cities, not the oth­er way around. 

“If they mere­ly want a gim­mick, I think its role will be lim­it­ed,” he says. “You need to run projects where you have a good under­stand­ing of how smart cities can help at the strate­gic, tac­ti­cal and oper­a­tional lev­els. The effec­tive­ness of a smart city can be cal­cu­lat­ed by look­ing at the val­ue added for the pub­lic.”

Costly missteps 

Pur­su­ing inno­va­tion for inno­va­tion’s sake has proved an expen­sive error for some devel­op­ers, which have seen their dreams of an advanced smart city fall flat. Take Mod­der­fontein New City, for instance. Announced in 2014 by Chi­nese devel­op­ment group Zendai, this R84bn (£5.8bn) project with­in the Johan­nes­burg met­ro­pol­i­tan area was hailed as the New York of Africa when con­struc­tion began in 2015. 

The smart city would have offered cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy and jobs for 200,000 peo­ple. But Zendai refused to include 5,000 units of social hous­ing want­ed by Johannesburg’s local author­i­ties. Instead, it pushed for a ful­ly lux­u­ry devel­op­ment, sig­nif­i­cant­ly draw­ing out the plan­ning process. With lit­tle fan­fare, Zendai cut its loss­es and sold the unfin­ished devel­op­ment on to anoth­er com­pa­ny, which has since begun work­ing to a far less ambi­tious plan.

Break­ing ground on a series of smart cities will not be a panacea that solves all urban prob­lems, of course. But the use of tech­nol­o­gy can help to tack­le spe­cif­ic issues result­ing from the grow­ing pains of African cities. 

The gov­ern­ment of Rwan­da is tak­ing one of the most advanced approach­es to the chal­lenge. Its com­pre­hen­sive smart city mas­ter plan illus­trates how inno­v­a­tive tech can improve the lives of city dwellers. Inno­va­tions that are already being rolled out in the cap­i­tal, Kigali, include smart street­lights, air-qual­i­ty sen­sors and bus­es offer­ing Wi-Fi con­nec­tiv­i­ty and cash­less pay­ment facil­i­ties.

Smart cities that cater to a defined indus­try may also be able to reduce the brain drain of high­ly skilled African pro­fes­sion­als. Tech­nol­o­gy pro­fes­sion­als have long moved to Europe and North Amer­i­ca to advance their careers, but it’s hoped that Kenya’s Kon­za Tech­nop­o­lis will draw in hi-tech tal­ent from across Africa. Nick­named Sil­i­con Savan­nah, this smart city is set to incu­bate the cut­ting-edge star­tups that promise to cre­ate the next gen­er­a­tion of home­grown inno­va­tions. 

Find­ing the right fund­ing struc­ture can be make or break for a smart city. Because the amount of pub­lic mon­ey avail­able is gen­er­al­ly lim­it­ed, financ­ing mod­els that com­bine inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment organ­i­sa­tions with insti­tu­tion­al investors are grow­ing in pop­u­lar­i­ty. 

Pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships are often used to deliv­er projects, as exper­tise from the busi­ness­es involved can unlock cost effi­cien­cies and access the wider tech start­up ecosys­tem. Devel­op­ment finance insti­tu­tions can help to mit­i­gate the rel­a­tive­ly high risks involved in these types of projects and also attract pri­vate invest­ment from both region­al and inter­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tions. 

International partnerships

The Organ­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-oper­a­tion and Devel­op­ment has fore­cast that the total pop­u­la­tion of Africa’s cities will grow by 950 mil­lion over the next 30 years. If man­aged effec­tive­ly, urban devel­op­ment can gen­er­ate eco­nom­ic growth, reduc­ing pover­ty and improv­ing liv­ing stan­dards. Yet, for nations that are unable to over­come the far-reach­ing prob­lems caused by rapid urban­i­sa­tion, the risk is that long-stand­ing inequities will be exac­er­bat­ed.

To realise the poten­tial of smart cities, gov­ern­ments and tech star­tups are form­ing part­ner­ships with inter­na­tion­al organ­i­sa­tions to devel­op tech skills that are essen­tial for build­ing smart cities. For instance, the Rwan­dan gov­ern­ment and a range of part­ners have estab­lished the Smart Cities Inno­va­tion Pro­gramme. This is a six-month accel­er­a­tor run­ning from June to Decem­ber 2021 that sup­ports African star­tups work­ing in fin­tech, clean­tech, smart hous­ing and mobil­i­ty.

A devel­op­ment enter­prise called the Ger­man Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Coop­er­a­tion is imple­ment­ing the pro­gramme. It’s bring­ing togeth­er African entre­pre­neurs and multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies to devel­op local solu­tions to local prob­lems. 

Olaf Sei­del is the agency’s pro­gramme direc­tor for dig­i­tal solu­tions for sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. He says: “Through our work, 30 African star­tups are receiv­ing sup­port from com­pa­nies, such as Volk­swa­gen and Siemens, and pub­lic stake­hold­ers, such as Rwanda’s green fund and the local min­istry of ICT and inno­va­tion, to scale up their prod­ucts.” 

Some of these star­tups are work­ing on smart inno­va­tions includ­ing a dig­i­tal walk­ing stick for visu­al­ly impaired peo­ple and bat­tery-charg­ing hubs for small elec­tric vehi­cles. 

“Through this approach, we pro­mote local inno­va­tions and allow African star­tups to learn from inter­na­tion­al exper­tise and the expe­ri­ences of oth­er coun­tries,” Sei­del says. “These are key ingre­di­ents for grow­ing Africa’s smart cities.”

Global lessons

Although each smart city project is unique and will require a bespoke plan, much can still be learnt from suc­cess­ful devel­op­ments around the globe. Coun­tries with high­ly mature tech ecosys­tems – Japan, for instance – offer mod­els that can be adapt­ed.

Pilar Cone­sa, CEO of Antev­er­ti, a con­sul­tan­cy spe­cial­is­ing in smart cities, con­sid­ers these urban spaces to be a response to the big chal­lenges of the 21st cen­tu­ry – name­ly: the cli­mate emer­gency and socioe­co­nom­ic inequal­i­ty. Tak­ing a col­lab­o­ra­tive approach to devel­op­ing smart cities helps to bypass com­mon pit­falls, she says.

“Japan’s gov­ern­ment recent­ly realised that, beyond focus­ing its dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion strat­e­gy on tech­nol­o­gy as a means to gen­er­ate eco­nom­ic growth, it also needs to use the poten­tial of tech­nol­o­gy as a means to help reduce the gaps between urban and rur­al envi­ron­ments,” says Cone­sa, who also curates the Smart City Expo World Con­gress.

Sev­er­al high-pro­file smart cities, includ­ing Eko Atlantic City in Nige­ria, have attract­ed crit­i­cism for cater­ing to a wealthy seg­ment of soci­ety and leav­ing behind low-income com­mu­ni­ties local to it. But, by plac­ing qual­i­ty of life and inclu­siv­i­ty at the cen­tre of smart city projects, tech­nol­o­gy can be recast as an enabler of equi­table social devel­op­ment, she adds. 

“Japan’s expe­ri­ence shows that there is no tru­ly sus­tain­able devel­op­ment with­out pro­mot­ing ter­ri­to­r­i­al cohe­sion and under­stand­ing socioe­co­nom­ic chal­lenges from a com­pre­hen­sive per­spec­tive,” Cone­sa says. “That is a ful­ly exportable les­son for the future of African cities.”