Are you ready for the African city of the future?

13 African cities will surpass the size of New York in the next 80 years according to the Visual Capitalist /Global Cities Institute, with cities such as Kinshasa growing at a staggering 1588%, from the current population of 4 million to 73.3 million by 2100 and Lagos leaping from 10.6 million to 88.3 million in the same period.

Johannesburg is another rapidly growing city, which over the last century has grown from a cluster of farms to the home of ‘Africa’s richest square mile’. Experiencing a growth rate of 10,000 new residents per month means the metropolis is in the front lines of massive growth. “The future is running faster than we are”, points out Mustapha Zaouini, CEO of Fliptin.

It is in this context that on November 28, 2017, Fliptin hosted its Inaugural Internet Of everyThing Africa meet up in partnership with Tshimologong, in Johannesburg, Braamfontein.

The theme of the evening, ‘Smart Cities and Urbanisation Challenges in Africa’ sparked thought-provoking conversation from experts in fields including engineering, policy, energy systems, and telecommunications and property management.

Johannesburg will become a megacity by 2030 and achieving Smart City status will be driven by solutions that fit the context, which Suveer Ramdhani, Chief Development Officer at SEACOM explained as, “This is Africa. Importing solutions won’t work. Local solutions need to be harnessed.” He cautioned that technology has to primarily address the needs and interests of the citizens; otherwise, we run the risk of deploying ‘technology for technology’s sake’.

The experts concurred that becoming a Smart City requires efficient provision of basic services, including water, electricity and sanitation, but given how rapidly growth is happening, optimising current resources is as important as planning for a future that hasn’t arrived.

Professor Barry Dwolatzky, Director of the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering asserts that while there is a huge opportunity to innovate, one should not overlook the everyday, often-simple grassroots solutions conceived from individualised efforts that solve local problems.

Taking advantage of the best ideas and skills requires a conducive urban environment for innovation, which Johannesburg, like many others, is still lagging in. “Municipalities have a reputation for being reactive and behind the curve”, which Amish Chana the founder of Exotic Systems sees as a bottleneck to unlock. He pointed out that smart technologies can facilitate more efficient service delivery and that the success of African cities lies in the ability to deliver optimally by combining the efforts of private and public sectors.

Praven Naidoo, Chief Commercial Officer at Gyro Group pointed out that cities which underutilize existing resources miss out on massive opportunities to be smart, e.g. through green solutions and efficient energy usage.

The adage that ‘what isn’t measured cannot be managed’, was reiterated by Sean Laval, the Innovations and Customer Solutions Executive at SqwidNet. According to him, one of the biggest challenges is resource management, which requires that you measure what is happening on a macro and micro scale, on practical, everyday things like monitoring water waste at home or deploying fire detection systems in informal settlements.

Along the same vein, Kefilwe Madingoane, Head of Global Public Policy at Intel Corporation advocates for tracking the influx of new urban migrants and utilising data from the informal economy, where many may be involved, to sustain the provision of services to a growing population.

Raj Naidoo a Faculty Member at the University of Pretoria and the Director of Smart Grid Research asserted that in order to have a smart city you have to have a strong, robust, reliable infrastructure and solutions such as micro-grids, this will be essential for ensuring that technological advances will work.

Ultimately, the Meet up highlighted that future Smart Cities of Africa need people-centric innovation to respond to the social and economic needs of communities while respecting their context.

With 54 countries on the continent, the solutions will have to be bold, original and varied to work.

For more information on the event, visit iotafrica.io and/or register for our next meet up : https://www.meetup.com/Internet-Of-everyThing-Africa/