AFRICA GOING DIGITAL 100 CITIES IN TRANSITION (2) CAPE TOWN: LEADING WITH SMART SENSORS AND REAL TIME DATA
Femi stop dreaming, Africa is not ripe for smart cities. Our leaders are not ready to take up the challenges of smart cities now. Smart cities will find the best staging ground in advanced economies, and surely not in a region that still struggles with weak infrastructure, inadequate food supply, chronic power shortages, and severe deprivations in basic human needs.
A friend called me and said I should be concerned about how Africa will come out of hunger and crisis instead of dreaming about smart cities. The truth however is that building smart cities is not as expensive and complicated as most people think and Africa’s problems will be solved faster by going smart.
The reality is smart cities form the most potent and holistic framework available, which can give shape to the overarching development goals of African states whilst staying true to the plural voices of thriving cities. Africa is well-placed to embark on the smart city journey, to lay the groundwork for building and evolving smart cities.
African Entrepreneur spirit: African entrepreneurship is central to Africa’s future prosperity. The biggest business opportunities in the coming decade will be created by Africans who start businesses, generate jobs and wealth, and capture growth opportunities. Across Africa, necessity is the mother of invention.
Cape Town leads with smart sensors and real time data.
IoT and real time data analysis has taken a particular stronghold in South Africa, where the country struggles to meet demand for electricity, water and waste management. Through sensors implemented across the major cities, municipalities can gather real-time data from millions of objects, including water meters, electricity meters, waste bins, traffic lights and street lights.
Benefits of this real time data can extend across farming optimization, to traffic management by informing travellers of congestion, crime management by using sensors that detect gunshots in crime zones, and waste management, in which metros are automatically informed by sensor-equipped bins when refuse needs to be collected.
Specifically, Cape Town’s government has launched a four-pillar project in an effort to establish itself as a Smart City. Cape Town’s Smart City Pillars
Cape Town has been hailed as one of Africa’s smartest cities, from its open data portal through which all data Cape Town registers from its citizens is made publicly available, to digital inclusion via free wifi enabled on city buses. Access to city data is just one small step in the external data revolution.
The city is already leveraging real time data efforts to improve emergency response, including fire and rescue, law enforcement and disaster risk management. The Cape Town Emergency Dispatch Centre was created to form one integrated public safety solution that facilitates operations and data sharing.
In the next ten years, it will be amazing what transformation would have taken place in Africa.
WATCH OUT……..