In 2013, the African city of Lagos broke ground for a new smart city on 25km2 of land reclaimed from the Atlantic Ocean. This new city, Eko Atlantic City, is designed to house 250,000 residents and provide offices for 150,000 workers. It is intended to become Nigeria’s foremost smart city, with its new financial district modelled after Manhattan. The city will host various business headquarters, including the new US Consulate building, which is expected to be the largest consulate in the sub-region.
Much like Eko Atlantic, several cities in sub-Saharan Africa are embracing smart city technologies to become more efficient. Presently, quite a number of purpose-built smart cities are emerging across Africa, such as Lanseria Smart City in South Africa, Konza Technology Business Hub in Kenya, and a few others. Across the continent, city authorities are either building new smart cities from scratch or retrofitting existing cities with smart technologies to create efficient and smart food systems, power grids, mobility and traffic control systems.
Presently, the synergy between technology, innovation, and futuristic placemaking has led to more efficient city governance in these smart cities, which deploy inventive technologies to harness cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) to collect, store, and process big data using algorithms in a network of supercomputers, thus providing real-time feedback to inspire swift and efficient decision-making.
Yet, as smart cities become popular across the continent, they have also become objects of criticism from a cross-section of urban dwellers, some of whom perceive them as capitalist contrivances created by the influential ubiquitous technology industry to service a simulated need – a new market for their software and hardware. Here in Africa, the reticence towards smart cities is noteworthy because its proponents haven’t yet demonstrated how these smart cities could effectively tackle subsisting social problems in African cities. For instance, the concept of smart cities raises critical questions about social inclusivity across African cities, which are mostly plagued by institutionalised socio-spatial inequalities.
Data from the African Development Bank (AFDB) shows that African cities have one of the highest levels of social inequalities globally. This social imbalance is mirrored in the uneven distribution of urban housing, mobility, jobs, healthcare and public amenities across African cities. According to the UN-Habitat, over a quarter (27%) of older people living in urban areas across Africa don’t have internet access, either due to lower digital skills or financial difficulties. The report also highlights the problem of affordability, as the cost of 1GB of data in many African cities is around 7.12% of the average monthly income, which is much higher than the affordability target set by the Broadband Commission.
The Alliance for Affordable Internet 2021 Report identifies internet affordability as a critical factor in digital inclusion and shows a clear link between higher income and better digital access. This connection is particularly evident in sub-Saharan African countries, where rising social inequality has birthed a system rigged against the urban poor, many of whom will be potentially excluded from active participation in these smart cities.
Socio-economic concerns in Africa’s smart cities
In addition to socio-economic and demographic exclusion, there are also subsisting challenges around the accommodation of people living with disabilities across African cities. According to a 2019 policy note by the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, Sweden, Cruelty by Design, Africa’s disabled urban population is ominously discriminated against in most cities. This is particularly true given the high levels of systematic prejudice against Africa’s disabled population.
The lack of accessibility standards in the design and operation of urban spaces makes it difficult for them to access public buildings, utilise public transport, or even use public facilities such as ATMs and vending machines. This compels them to rely on second parties to carry out their transactions, thus making them susceptible to exploitation. According to the UN, there are more than 80 million people with disabilities living in Africa.
This is a significant number, especially with the very high plausibility that the lack of physical accessibility could most likely also translate into a lack of accessibility on digital platforms. This potentially poses significant challenges for people living with disabilities and limits their participation in smart cities, thus exacerbating an already difficult situation.
Culturally, smart cities are emerging at the dawn of a regional sociocultural awakening across Africa, birthing a clamour for the adoption of indigenous urbanism models in lieu of the alien placemaking models left behind by colonial city administrators. This new social consciousness has led to growing discontent among a significant cross-section of the local population, who view contemporary urbanisation models as the antithesis of the overarching indigenous ideology around which pre-colonial African cities and towns were built (cities that were culturally sensitive and socially responsive).
Hence, most are calling for the adoption of an Afrocentric urban model that is specific to Africa and defined by a unique social and spatial milieu that reflects native values of communalism and good neighbourliness. This reality presents a real challenge for smart city designers and administrators, who now have the added responsibility of demonstrating cultural inclusion and sensitivity to native African cultural ethos.
Will smart cities just plaster over the cracks?
If layered over the pre-existing landscape of spatial injustices and social exclusion, smart cities have the potential to further accentuate Africa’s dubious urban legacy of institutionalised social inequities, further exacerbating social injustices within the urban population. This situation has the potential to preclude a significant subset of the local population from experiencing any of the benefits of smart cities. This reality portends a very plausible and significant challenge and has the potential to counteract the benefits of smart cities.
While technology plays an important role in making things simpler, faster and more accessible, it should not be the raison d’être for building smart cities. Hence, the concept of smartness in city design and management must extend beyond technology and ensure intelligent decision-making. It is important that smart cities are built upon a framework of social justice and should enhance social cohesion rather than accentuate prejudices, enable wider participation, and guarantee the well-being of all residents.
Consequently, a socially sustainable African smart city should be a delicate dance between 21st-century technologies and the social realities of contemporary African cities, one that entails a patchwork of compromises between people and technology. Therefore, smart cities must nimbly navigate the complex labyrinth of pre-existing socio-economic and socio-cultural peculiarities of each city, to birth cities that are both accessible and agreeable to all.
[Read more: Attacks on Africa’s informal settlements are attacks on women’s economic liberation. Here’s why.]
