Nairobi is a redesign away from smart city league, says report

An Aerial view of Nairobi City from Upper Hill. PHOTO:WILBERFORCE OKWIRI

Nairobi is among African cities that urgently require redesigning and repositioning to attain smart city status.

According to a new report by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), Nairobi is among urban centres in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) that currently do not function as engines of growth as they were envisioned at independence.

This is because they are not yet properly positioned to attract local or international investment for development. 

As a result, the State of African Cities 2018 report says SSA cities do not yet have what it takes for them to join the league of smart cities in the world.  

The report defines smart cities as those with a good track record in attracting Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) from geographically distant and diverse sources, and are socially and economically open to the world.

Such cities have high economic production and employment levels, foster strong equality among citizens, and have relatively small populations and geographic sizes.

 Instead, notes the report, what we find in many African cities is high income inequality and unemployment levels, high to very high unemployment levels (especially among youth and in weaker urban economies with large informal sectors), high population, among other challenges.

As a result, the report says, the cities score comparatively low in terms of smartness (in the categories of Less Smart and Moderately Smart) and also attract a much smaller volume of FDI than many other smart cities worldwide.

Nairobi is ranked eighth in Africa in terms of attracting investment, but takes position 146 in the world.

Top 30 cities

London attracts approximately 15 per cent of total global foreign real estate investment (FREI) capital, with the top 30 cities of the world accounting for roughly 90 per cent of total FREI flows.

“London, Cairo and Tunis form the top three global recipients, in descending order, and attract about 33 per cent of FREI capital,” says the report.

However, the four SSA cities of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Lagos and Nairobi combined attract a relatively small amount: less than one per cent of the total FREI flows.

The report attributes this to poor urban planning and investment policies.

“Today, many SSA cities have a bewildering mixture of customary, formal private, state-owned, and informal land and housing tenure systems, often blended within the same city or even urban neighbourhood,” it says.

 At the same time, the study found that urban plans and planning institutions are often ineffective across Africa.

This is attributed to most of the regulatory codes and planning models being inherited from colonial regimes or imported from other developed countries and are not always appropriate for modern Africa.