AFRICA’S
FUTURE
CITIES
Africa’s Future Cities | FEATURE
© Paolo Brescia OBR, Italy
FEATURE | Africa’s Future Cities
WORDS NANA OCRAN
enya’s new ‘technopolis’ or ‘Silicon Savannah’ are tags that are
consistently applied to Konza City, a huge government-marketed
project that sits in Makueni County, about 40 miles beyond Kenya’s
capital, Nairobi. A 5,000-acre science and commercial project, it’s
being developed to the tune of $14.5 billion, with a far-flung launch
date of 2030. That’s a decade and a half of waiting to see how it
might compare with the atmosphere and ethos of Silicon Valley, the
San Francisco Bay area of the US, where many of the world’s largest
high-tech corporations and tech startups are based.
Set to feature innovation labs, tech offices, financial districts,
artificial rivers, mosques and churches, Konza City was initially a
miniature-sized model that sat on the desk of Bitange Ndemo, the
former permanent secretary in Kenya’s Ministry Of Information And
Communications. The task was, and still is, for numerous projects to
be developed in the Makueni region.
It’s an interesting prospect, to essentially build a city of the future
while living in an evolving digital age. In terms of activity on the
continent, Kenya has an infrastructure that’s robust enough to attract
multinational tech companies – Google, Nokia, Samsung and the like
– but now, other African countries, even those with far less of a
footing in the world of technology and investment, are also in the
midst of highly ambitious and aesthetically futuristic plans for the
design and business networks of their own metropolises.
Where there’s hope
Ghana comes under the spotlight with Appolonia: City Of Light, an
urban development in Greater Accra. Named to reflect the vision for the
project, Appolonia, City Of Light will be home to people with different
income levels, occupying a mix of residential, commercial and industrial
buildings. “The idea is for residents to live a complete life in Appolonia,
without the need to travel to the city centre,” says Josephine Mallet,
who’s responsible for marketing and communications. Launched in
With the rise of million-dollar tech parks and hub spaces of all sizes throughout the
continent, countries including Ghana, Nigeria and DRC are rethinking the landscapes of
Africa. ‘Mixed use’, predominantly urban-located centres, with residential, commercial
and high-tech groundwork underpin the use of ambitiously designed city spaces.
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FEATURE | Africa’s Future Cities
Africa’s Future Cities | FEATURE
Paolo Brescia OBR, Italy
Brain Gain
Hope City aims to
attract young talent
to Africa
(Right)
Hope Floats
A design for Hope
City technology park
in Accra, Ghana
futuristic in the Kinshasa environment.”
Despite Kinshasa being one of the fastest growing cities in Africa,
the idea of reclaiming the river by building an urban complex on the
swamplands surrounding it was hard to sell. “Everyone laughed at me
for two years,” Choudury says. “We had to show the world that it was
possible to invest and make money in the DRC outside of mining and
timber.” With his team, he essentially had to show people the future
that “Building houses and roads is the easiest part. Getting people to
adapt their behaviour was more difficult. The way they live, park their
cars, hang their laundry… everything.”
Thanks to this communal rethinking, it’s now forbidden to build
a house in the area without an access road. From the project’s
paperwork in 2008 to approval a year later, four completed apartments
built in 2011 and to date, a delivery of 400 units, there’s naturally been
interest from African investors from other parts of the continent. This is
just one housing project amongst others in Africa, but added to much
of the nuanced activity that’s taking place across the continent, the
future of Africa’s various vistas looks extremely intriguing.
CITY SITES
APPOLONIA CITY OF LIGHT
www.appolonia.com.gh
A Light on Accra
Appolonia: City of
Light will combine
residential,
commercial and
industrial spaces
active player in the global
economy, and attracting young
talent back to Africa.”
Ten billion dollars is the
estimated cost of the project, and
although the ground was broken
by Ghana’s President, John
Mahama in 2013, with various
news outlets citing a completion
date of around 2016, as an organically unfolding city, the long process
involves various phases, sites and designers. “And that will never stop,”
says Brescia. “Our intention is to expand the design process to other
architects and urban designers. We’re not interested in creating
buildings as objects in the landscape, but to reflect the culture, the
vision and the aspirations of the people; a city for the people.”
This is very much the language of community; something that is
deeply embedded into the context and the ethos of Hope City. With
different functions being linked together, the design aim is to harness
the essence of a public space. With this being a Silicon Valley-style
city, that status might evolve organically if youthful tech-start ups are
attracted to the location. But Brescia is clear that the area is not a
campus. “It’s a new urban polarity, where people can meet and enjoy
their interconnected lives, which includes the aspirations of young
talents, not only from high-tech, but also from the creative industries.
It's a place to exchange ideas and experiences.”
“What traditionally happens in most African countries is that
the south is always developed and the north is sectioned off. It’s
a shame, because they’re the ones that actually need most of the
technology and innovations.” Josiah Kwesi Eyison, iSpace Foundation
2012, one of the ambitions for the city is for it to be a holistic
geographical enterprise: so naturally green areas – public open spaces
and walkways — as well as a dedicated retail space within a Central
Business District are all firmly on the cards.
It’s a broadly similar story, but with a different slant, in Prampram,
also part of Ghana’s Greater Accra Region. A town that’s set to be an
international hub, there are plans for an airport and seaport, although
much excitement revolves around Hope City, a technology park that
will be located there. The name derives from Home, Office, People
and Environment, but the slicker, four-letter title epitomises a sense
of urban optimism for a project that currently exists in rendered form
only. Hope City’s design aesthetic shows a dynamic, modern-day
take on the traditional, round-house structures usually seen in
northern Ghana. Six circular towers will each have link bridges on
different floors to allow movement between each building. The
largest tower, at 270 metres, will contain 75 floors, making it the tallest
building in Africa – beating out the yet-to-be-completed residential
Millennium Tower And Cultural Centre project that’s long been
earmarked for Abuja, Nigeria.
The Hope City story began in 2012, when architect Paulo Brescia
of Italian firm, Open Building Research (OBR) met Roland Agambire,
founder of Rlg, the billion-dollar Ghanaian ICT company. “Roland
asked us to design an ICT centre for Rlg, but suddenly it was clear that
his vision embraced the idea of a city,” says Brescia. “I became
fascinated by this, not because of the huge dimensions, but because
it gives a great meaning to the city of Accra, turning Ghana into an
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iSpace is the place
The impact of technology and young entrepreneurial mindsets on
Africa’s urban landscape is still worth considering. It’s also worth
remembering that the continent has the largest youth population
across the globe, so ideas and aspirations need to be met both
physically, and in fact, spiritually. Talking with Josiah Kwesi Eyison,
co-founder of Ghana’s iSpace Foundation, which sits in the heart of
Osu in central Accra, it’s clear he represents the type of
businessperson who might be attracted to locations like Appolonia or
Hope City. His foundation is home to over 30 startups that fuse
collaborative, technological and social ideas. However, Eyison is far
more taken with the idea of hub communities spread out across
Ghana. Of Hope City, he says: “The idea is great, but rather than have
one dedicated area, why not build tech neighbourhoods? They could
be scattered across the country, with a fund of say, $5K, that’s put in
place for new startups.”
This is an idea that’s very much in line with the iSpace ethos. An
oasis on the fifth floor of a five-story building overlooking Accra’s
bustling town and seafront, it houses a startup working area, an events
section, a co-working space and a meeting room. Eyison’s mission for
iSpace is for the organisation to develop and support a thriving
entrepreneurial and innovative ecosystem in Ghana. He believes that
while this is clearly attainable, it remains a particular challenge when
compared with the pace of business and innovation that happens in
other parts of the continent. “We literally have to start from scratch,”
he says. “For a lot of people in Ghana, their idea of doing tech is
learning how to use PowerPoint, Word and Excel.”
Because of this, iSpace runs dynamic training programmes to
combat any limited tech thinking. Young entrepreneurs can sign up
for ‘hackathons’ and sessions in coding, but beyond the Accra-based
building, the team have forged external partnerships and also
produce mobile events – particularly in cities in the north. “That’s
where most of the need is,” says Eyison. “Places like Tamale. Because
what traditionally happens in most African countries is that the south
is always developed and the north is sectioned off. It’s a shame,
because they’re the ones that actually need most of the technology
and innovations.”
This taps into a sense of creating another type of future landscape
– particularly for Ghana – where the whole of a country is pulled into
new ways of networking and new mindsets that focus on social
solutions through technology. Although new urban spaces such as
Appolonia, City Of Light and Hope City might provide physical room
for this, these projects aren’t just concerned with accommodating
tech startups. There are other ecosystems that are also being
developed in the West, and other regions, of Africa.
ISPACE FOUNDATION
ispacegh.com
KONZA TECHNO CITY
www.konzacity.go.ke
LA CITÉ DU FLEUVE
www.lacitedufleuve.com
OBR
www.openbuildingresearch.com
This is not Manhattan
Over in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Kinshasa-based Cité
Du Fleuve (River City) is essentially a land-speculation project and
independent commune. Less Silicon Valley and much more a new
central African bay for prime, river-based housing, it has been tagged
‘the new Manhattan’, a name the project’s CEO, Robert Choudury,
baulks at. “That’s a journalist invention,” he says. “We just want to
build normal houses on normal roads. Naturally, it looks quite
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