The African Smart Cities Investment Summit (ASCIS 2024) was hosted in Nairobi, Kenya in November 20 – 22, 2024 at the Radisson Blue Hotel, Upper Hill. The DataCities Consortium and particularly, ToroDev – ODA were well represented. The event provided an invaluable platform for African city leaders, experts, researchers in smart city spaces and innovators to exchange strategies and insights on leveraging data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to build more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient urban environments. With urbanisation rapidly accelerating, particularly in Africa, the summit underscored the urgent need for innovative solutions that harness technology to address the challenges of growing populations while promoting inclusivity, sustainability, equity, and economic growth.
World Bank (2023) reportsthat over 80% of the world’s Growth Domestic Product (GDP) is generated in cities –demonstrating the centrality and potentiality such urban centres have on productivity and innovation, if governed and managed well, specially using modern digital technology. A smart city governance framework may be modelled on an ideology which is based on three strands and/or dimensions: clarity of purpose, technology appropriateness and resources availability. Central to understanding the above strands, is the availability of contextual facts (data) and optimisation of AI to use such data for insights generation and vise-versa. Look out for a future article in which we have tried to expound more on these strands
In this article, the authors focus on the general overview of learnings from the ASCIS 2024. This article synthesises- and summarises key takeaways and actionable insights for ToroDev-ODA and the entire DataCities Consortium from the ASCIS 2024 Summit, offering guidance on how cities can navigate the complexities of using the opportunities provided by data analytics and integrating AI technologies into urban development. Take a few minutes to read through the following thought lines. Download full Article here