Out of Africa by |Global Citizens|
We are a three-member team of Cultural Management students, interested in Athens’ regeneration through culture and co-creation. Within the context of the workshop “Athens Co-Creation City Branding Project”, hosted by Betty Tsakarestou, we took a journey around the world to explore initiatives, campaigns and cases that apply to vibrant cities and have a message to communicate to the world.
*Global citizens a.k.a. Eva Anagnostaki, Ourania Mavriki & Anastasia Rizou
The first stop of our journey was in Africa where we focused our interest on three cities which have lately developed the “smart city” concept. Let’s travel to Nairobi, Accra and Johannesburg and explore them in terms of smartness, quality of life and sustainability.
Nairobi: From “Nairobbery” to the top of the citiness rankings
First of all, it is crucial to mention that the Kenyan capital is the smartest city of Africa for second year in a row, according to Intelligent Community Forum.
Nonetheless, if we stepped back in 2012, we would see the city suffering from traffic congestion and serious urban planning shortages. However, IBM experts envisioned a more liveable city, aiming to discard the fame of “Nairobbery”, a portmanteau that reveals one of the city’s notorious aspects. Nairobi participated in IBM’s project Smarter Cities Challenge, a program developed by the company in order to help cities around the world deal with their most critical challenges, and the results seem to be pretty positive. In the video below, there is an overview of the problems and challenges that Nairobi was facing back in 2012, before“Smarter Cities Challenge” implementation.
As mentioned before, Nairobi is the smartest city of Africa and what is worth mentioning is that smartness is also located in the centre of its education system. Moreover, the Kenyan capital has become an important innovation hub, attracting lots of corporate investors that choose the city to settle their business and get inspired by the creativity and rising economy.
Apart from smart, Nairobi is sustainable. Africa Sustainability Hub was launched this year in Nairobi and aims at fostering the ecological awareness and inspiring both its citizens and authorities to work more on the city’s sustainability. Due to high voltage and energy problems that Nairobi has been facing during the last decades, the research center Africa Sustainability Hub aims to foster “pro-poor low carbon economic development”.
Regarding city’s character, Nairobi is supposed to be authentic, exciting, multicultural and inspiring and in truth it has been ranked amongst the top five enviable and exciting cities in the continent . It is said that Its unique characteristic is that it combines the sophistication of the South African cities with a gentler, less strict mentality and happy, warm people.
In a nutshell, during IBM’s program, Nairobi seems to have moved forward in mobility, public safety, community, innovation but it still lacks in civic involvement, shareability and culture.
Accra: Joining the race of citiness
As one of Africa’s fastest urbanizing cities, Accra actively participates in the race for the smartest city in the continent. According to Mastercard’s African Cities Growth Index, it is a city with high economic potential for the next five years, while Mercer has ranked it as the 14th African city with the Best Quality of Life.
A key advantage concerning the technological adoption is that Accra does not suffer from the crippling costs associated with the maintenance of legacy infrastructure and systems. On the other hand, Accra needs to deal with key challenges that affect its everyday life. The main problems of the city are that the growing population needs better city service, solution of traffic problems and there is an immediate need for growth in the energy supply.
These challenges have been identified by IBM experts who have closely collaborated with Accra’s local authorities, in order to suggest smart solutions for the city’s key issues. This effort is, also, part of the city’s participation in the Smarter Cities Challenge and the journey towards a smart city might be long, but in the case of Accra, it has already some interesting results.
First of all, considering that Accra’s mobile penetration is pretty high, the city is already working on mobile payment systems, in order to limit tax underpayment and fraud. Furthermore, Accra aspires to become a world class tech hub and its has already implemented three projects towards this direction:“Ghana Cyber City”, “Appolonia City” and “King City”. As for the traffic congestion it faces, Accra is already in the process of installing smart and networked traffic lights that reduce serious transportation problems.Moreover, in order to resolve the energy problems, the use wind and solar power as a backup energy system has been seriously extended in Ghana´s capital.
What about Accra´s “personality” and livability? Accra seems to be an appealing -for tourism and business- city with interesting assets, including the warm and friendly locals, its lively nightlife and its tropical climate. Moreover, Accra is a pretty popular destination for up-scale Nigerians, mainly because of its entertainment options and variety.
Below, the video presents IBM’s report on Accra and highlights how it should face its challenges, through technology and smartness.
Johannesburg
With more than 7 million people in its metropolitan area, Johannesburg is the largest city in South Africa. Unfortunately, years of economic turmoil and urban blight have made “Jo’burg” famous for its high crime rate, apart from its rich history and cultural importance. Johannesburg is a vibrant, diverse and cosmopolitan city, with friendly people and high economic activity but the challenges it faces are many, including the already mentioned high criminality, poverty, unemployment, and bad health conditions.
Nevertheless, Johannesburg is just beginning its journey towards becoming a smarter city and the capital of South Africa aims to be totally smart by 2040. Johannesburg has already taken a big step towards dissolving the digital divide and exclusion, by launching its Smart Citizen Programme.
During its effort to become smarter, South Africa´s capital has already rolled out 54 Wi-Fi hotspots and 20 of them are located in the city´s autobuses and aims at providing more than 80 public libraries with internet access, by the end of this month. The sustainability of Johannesburg is also highlighted in various projects for cleaner air, more efficient transport and a pleasant living environment. For example, the Corridors of Freedom project improved city’s environment quality by reducing the need for private transport.
Last but not least, what should be taken into account when examining Jo´burg´s current citiness is the quality of life it offers to its citizens. Without overlooking the social problems of the city, there seems to be an attempt to improve its livabilitty.
How is that achieved? By promoting social inclusion, bringing the residents closer to work, providing them with leisure opportunities along with social initiatives, such as the inner city rooftops where low-cost food is grown. Is that enough though? And what is in the end the “smart cities” concept all about?
Below, there are some thoughts of us regarding the three African cities explored and their smartness.
Our thoughts
Without doubt, hacking the challenges of your city using technological tools is constructive and should be more than welcome. Nonetheless, what intrigued our interest was that in these African cities, the socio-spatial implications of these new forms of urbanism seem to have been unimportant to IBM’s experts and local authorities. Besides, in our opinion it would be necessary to examine the special needs and challenges of each city and, most importantly, to engage and involve the local community with this technological upgrade, in order to avoid exclusion and knowledge gap. All in all, what seems to be missing in this African “smartness race” is the locals’ voice, will and cultural identity.
Finally, in the first two cases (Nairobi, Accra) the “smart city” concept has been an initiative of the multinational IBM in collaboration with the local authorities. And as Adam Greenfield asks “How can we ensure that this is not a (techno) utopian fantasy that, once unraveled, it will reveal more than the opening of markets and large corporations’ profit?”
You can also read our presentation here.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — Greenfield, Adam. Against the Smart City: A Pamphlet. Do projects, 2013.
Our next stop is Berlin and its interesting [be Berlin] campaign
