The theme of AITEC Africa Summit 2012 is Smart cities, Smart societies, Smart enterprises. The event will take place on 24th and 25th at Oshwal Conference Centre in Nairobi. I think, this is the right time to go back to the study done by IBM sometime about Nairobi. “A Vision of a Smarter City: How Nairobi Can Lead the Way into a Prosperous and Sustainable Future”.
It highlights transportation, energy and public safety as three critical areas to address in line with the growth of Nairobi’s more economically empowered and mobile younger generation.
Based on a roundtable discussion which took place late 2011, the report outlines how Nairobi should turn to the latest technologies and global best practices to transform itself into a ‘smarter’ and more efficient city as it strives to cope with an expanding population and become a major African business hub.
“With increased urbanization and substantial economic opportunities, major African cities like Nairobi are coming under more pressure than ever to transform,” said Tony Mwai, Country General Manager, IBM East Africa. “For Nairobi to reach its full potential as a regional powerhouse, new technologies and approaches are required to modernize the city’s systems and to make it a better place to live, work and do business.”
Kenya’s demographic challenges
Currently home to just over 3 million inhabitants, Nairobi’s population is expected to soar to over five million by 2020 as migration to urban areas continues.
“Kenya is undergoing a simultaneous demographic and geographic transition,” explains Wolfgang Fengler, the World Bank’s lead economist in Kenya. “Today it is a rural country but by 2033 it will be an urban country with Nairobi receiving the greatest influx of new citizens.”
Tackling traffic congestion requires new approaches as well as new infrastructure
According to IBM’s Commuter Pain Survey, Nairobi is the fourth most painful commute in the world. According to city officials, traffic jams cost the economy over Sh50 million (over $600,000) a day in lost productivity, fuel consumption and pollution.
City authorities are currently investing to improve Nairobi’s roads and basic infrastructure. However, the report highlights that investment in the city’s road network should not be the only strategy for addressing traffic congestion.
“Nairobi needs new transport alternatives urgently. It is increasingly obvious that Nairobi must move beyond the traditional model of just building roads to solve traffic problems. It needs a combination of physical infrastructure, new ways of thinking and new technologies” said Andre Dzikus, Urban Mobility Unit, UN-HABITAT.
The report lists a number of possible technological solutions to consider including micro chips embedded in driving licenses to record a driver’s road history, priced road usage schemes and using mobile phone signal density to pinpoint and predict traffic jams.
Reliable and affordable energy increases efficiency and competitiveness
Energy is a critical and pressing issue for people living and working in Nairobi. According to KENGEN, Nairobi suffers from 11,000 high voltage fluctuations and power outages every month. For Nairobi’s smarter city aspirations to be realised, energy has to be affordable as well as reliable.
“Nairobi’s unreliable energy is not just an inconvenience, but also a critical business issue,” said Linus Gitahi, CEO of Nation Media Group
The white paper highlights the development of alternative energy sources, smart metering and incentive schemes to change energy consumption as possible solutions to Nairobi’s energy problems.
A safer Nairobi needs smarter technologies and increased collaboration
Technology is already starting to help make Nairobi smarter and empower citizens. In the security sector, an expanding CCTV network has been deployed by public and private players sector meaning that over 90% of the city is now covered by cameras. However, the white paper underlines the need for modern analytics technologies to help understand and respond to the vast amounts of relevant information that such systems generate.
The report also calls for better collaboration between public and private sectors as well as more integration between government departments. This issue is critical to public safety as Nairobi’s citizens rely on a number of private security companies as well as public departments for emergency services. The report suggests that shared emergency resources between public and private sectors and centralised information systems could improve Nairobi’s ability to deal with major city incidents such as last year’s fuel explosion and fire in the impoverished Sinai district of the city in which more than 100 people were killed.
“By working together with the private sector, the government can create cities that meet the needs of their citizens more efficiently,” said Bitange Ndemo, Information Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Information.
The white paper also underlines Kenya’s advantage in technology innovation as a way to address some of the challenges of urbanization. Cloud computing, mobile technologies and social media could all have a role to play. “The good thing about Kenya is that it is exporting as well as importing innovations,” said Wolfgang Fengler from World Bank. “In the case of mobile money, crowd-sourcing and many other innovations Kenya is quite remarkable.”