Ramaphosa’s dream cities are not as far-fetched as they seem
Home-grown smart solutions to our challenges can be a win-win for all in the country
PRESIDENT Ramaphosa’s rendition of “I have a dream” was met with praise by some but criticism and even rebuttal by others, especially in engineering quarters who interrogated the prospect of “smart cities”.
His State of the Nation Address (Sona) shimmered with hope, but was found lacklustre in practicality. Perhaps, South Africa needs real solutions as opposed to a dream.
The Sona happened to coincide with the Smart Cities Conference in Midrand hosted by the government and private sector that looked at the concept of smart cities and the role that Information and Communications Technology can play in making cities more habitable to their citizens.
As the president’s talk touched on a vision of what this city really should mean to its people, it allowed experts an opportunity to feed in the detail to make sure that whatever is implemented fits in to the current South African context.
The advent of tech innovation, smart technologies, talk of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Artificial Intelligence has created a feeling of a world without boundaries. And that feeling, though positive, can have negative implications for government and private corporations who get caught up in a sense of Fomo (fear of missing out), especially as others experience success with it.
Typically, budgets are set aside, teams are set up, and consultants are brought on board without considering the golden principle of investing in technology. If it solves a problem, it is probably worthwhile, and if it doesn’t, it’s a waste of money.
They begin with technology, and then try to figure out the “best fit” for that tech in their organisations. This approach is a recipe for disaster. So, what is the correct approach?
Start with the challenges and those areas we want to improve and then bring the technology to address them.
Once achieved, we then move on to the next area of focus: identifying people who will drive this change by finding solutions to the challenges.
This is the area that is most exciting as it brings together a host of stakeholders and hopefully addresses the problem of having so many of our young people out of work.
This involves working with tertiary institutions to ensure that they are geared to produce tech leaders of a high calibre, cultivating a healthy start-up culture, and encouraging corporations to invest in their young employees by up-skilling them with tech-related training.
In a nutshell, we’re talking about identifying major developmental and socio-economic challenges that plague people in our current cities, and then search for brilliant people with smart technology solutions to these problems.
For example, Singapore had the challenge of limited usable space which affected food production, the availability of fresh water and housing. Istanbul had to find ways to manage massively high tourist numbers, while Delhi had to work on its dangerously high levels of air pollution. Each had to find their own solutions.
Our challenges include traffic congestion, housing, crime and insecure electricity supply. Basically, our cities reflect the macro-scale problems of the country.
Fortunately, these problems are not unique, and a number of smart solutions have already been implemented by other countries.
To solve our traffic congestion challenge, we can look to Istanbul and develop a highly efficient, cheap, clean, and safe public transportation system that integrates different modes of transport.
Like Istanbul, ours can be integrated with Google maps, thus allowing anyone, as smartphones have become relatively inexpensive, to plan trips ahead using Google Maps to sync times for trains and buses.
An efficient public transport system into our cities and towns will also address congestion in the CBD as it will make sense to live outside of the city without having to worry about the expense and inconvenience of commuting for work.
Energy insecurity could be addressed with efficient renewable energy spearheaded by solar power. In China, for instance, many of its cities have set up their own solar farms.
Another viable solution is offered by Tesla in the US. Its solar-roof tiles generate electricity, while their “power wall” domestic battery stores the extra power for times when there’s no sun.
Closer to home, ISF recently fitted an array of solar panels on top of client Nedbank’s new staff parkade.
Every city in the country is potentially a smart city, but only if we focus on solving problems that people are facing rather than on technology for the sake of it.
The best thing that government can do is to develop a long-term strategic transformation plan rather than focusing on quick fixes. As far as implementation goes, the government should rely on South African businesses and empower local youth to drive the transformation. In this way, we will not only create a win-win solution where not only will some of the country’s main problems will be solved, but it will create employment.
After all, South African problems need South African solutions.
Kathrada is a director at one of the largest black-owned engineering procurement and construction management firms, the ISF Group.