WINDHOEK – The 2019 Smart Cities Africa Summit themed: “Co-creating smart cities in Africa – beyond the rhetoric,” took place in Johannesburg last week.
Known as Africa’s must attend Smart City Conference and Exhibition, the event brought together visionary and city leaders in the space of Smart Cities to share their experiences, best-practices and solutions for smart city realisation.
With continuing urbanisation and overall growth of Africa’s population, citizens are demanding improved municipal services in a way that supports their lifestyle and cities have no choice than to urbanise further to adopt a digital ecosystem that allows city officials to interact directly with residents, city infrastructure and monitors what is happening in the city in real time.
This places an even greater need for interdependence between cities to deal with challenges such as population growth, climate change, traffic congestion, affordable housing and issues related to education.
A smart city concept uses emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) and sensors to connect infrastructure, collect data and then uses such data to manage, engage citizens, visitors, and businesses in an intelligent, connected ecosystem. The aim is to create safer and live-able environments where people and businesses can thrive.
The success of smart cities will depend on governments implementing the right policies and for Namibia, it is critical to get government and the private sector to establish close cooperation. As a leading technology company, MTC sees the need to help drive the need for a connected infrastructure and smart technology in Namibia through partnership with local municipalities and agencies to leverage on connectivity for a digital economy.
Speaking from the Smart City Summit in Johannesburg, MTC’s Tim Ekandjo explained that MTC advocates for smart cities in Namibia.
“It is MTC’s vision to see the smart city concept implemented in Namibia, starting with Windhoek. This concept can improve the efficiency of city services by eliminating redundancies, finding ways to save money and streamlining responsibilities. The results obviously provide higher quality services at lower cost which benefits citizens. At the end of the day it’s about responding to citizens, engaging them timely and putting your citizens first by giving them a decent quality of life in a sustainable manner,” said Ekandjo.
This year’s Smart Cities Africa Summit edition, which ended on July 4, 2019, boasts a resounding success after being exemplified by a number of senior business executives in attendance as well as, high commissioners, ambassadors and mayors.