The Potentials and Challenges of Developing Smart Cities in Africa

The rapid urbanization of African cities is one amongst other composite challenges hindering Africa’s objective to provide stable socio-economic development and delivery of quality livelihood for its citizens and visitors at large. The establishment of Smart City initiatives in African cities is meant to improve the quality of lives of the residents of those cities. Information and communications technologies (ICT) are key enabling factors for this transformation and must be integrated into several functional domains of society, such as health, education, transportation, energy, etc., so as to engender efficient and ubiquitous public services, as well as higher socio-economic standards of living for the citizens. This paper highlights the potential benefits, as well as challenges, African cities embarking on Smart City initiatives face. To further grasp the motivations and challenges of implementing Smart City initiatives in Africa, we take a look at a new Smart City initiative (The SmartCity Innovation Hub, by Smart City Resort plc.) that is underway in the city of Lagos, Nigeria. We questioned the developers on their motivations for undertaking such a Smart City initiative in Africa, the potential economic, technological and environmental benefits of the project, and the challenges of embarking on such a project.