Dodoma as a Smart City?

Kurzweil

JF-Expert Member
May 25, 2011
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I was taken by surprise by the President’s decision to move the government to Dodoma. I felt the idea was ill-advised to say the least. But, when the dust had settled a bit, I started seeing a myriad of opportunities for Dodoma.

After all, as strategists, our task now is to make the best of the situation. And Dodoma has just become a treasure trove of strategic opportunities.

Unfortunately as people we are not renowned for our excellence in strategic thinking. You look at the city like Dar es salaam and you wonder whether there has been any government around for decades.

One
may choose to use poverty as an excuse, but any sort of planning would have been better than no planning. Lack of foresight is endemic – everything is done as an afterthought.

That is usually costly and extremely inefficient. That is the reason we don’t reap top dividends from our infrastructure investments.


But Dodoma is different. It is almost a clean slate, an opportunity to start afresh: correct the mistakes of the past if you will. This is by no means a guarantee that mistakes of the past will not be repeated, alas, history suggests that most probably they will. But with the new government in place at least Tanzanians can have dreams.

Mine is to see Dodoma become the first, or second - it does not matter - smart city in East Africa.



The Kenyans have been toying with a similar idea since 2008. Their marvelous 14.5 billion dollars project covering 5000 acres named Konza City is billed to be the largest technology hub in the region.

While the project has been mired with many complications over the years luckily construction started last May. So, on its own, the idea is not new, but we have a much better reason to succeed than them: Dodoma is our capital city.

A smart city is a city where digital technology forms the core infrastructure for providing essential services to the populace. A smart city is designed essentially with economic growth in mind.

The idea is to improve the quality of life through the use of technology.
Intelligence and sustainability are key concepts in smart cities.

The ‘Smart Dodoma’ mission will surely challenge our planning capabilities, limited as they are, but, given the political will, it is easily achievable. In essence what we are proposing is to make Dodoma Tanzania’s ‘Apollo Project’, that is, similar to the US project that landed first men on the moon.

But, we may ask as the Americans asked then, why? In the words of John F. Kennedy: we choose (these goals) not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because they serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

In short, like the Americans, this will give Tanzanians an opportunity to raise their game. The difference is while the Americans could have chosen not to implement the Apollo Project but us, having committed to move, we no longer have that luxury.

The choice before us is to do so in the smartest way possible. And what is better than making a city smart?

Now, while a wide application of digital technology is a major characteristic of a smart city, the idea goes beyond ICT to encompass smart ideas for mobility, governance, energy, construction, healthcare, etc. Their incorporation will make Dodoma a super efficient city that will provide a major leap forward from the status quo today.

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This vision will make it possible to build new companies, develop new industries, improve government service delivery, and achieve the other justifications that were used to move to Dodoma.

If, with a construction of only 60 acres the Kenyans can envisage a return of 2% in GDP within five years, surely we can do much better to boost the region's contribution to national GDP from the currently paltry 3% (ranking number 17 among regions nationwide) to well beyond 10% within the next 10 years.

This vision will make it possible to build new companies, develop new industries, improve government service delivery, and achieve the other justifications that were used to move to Dodoma. If, with a construction of only 60 acres the Kenyans can envisage a return of 2% in GDP within five years, surely we can do much better to boost the region's contribution to national GDP from the currently paltry 3% (ranking number 17 among regions nationwide) to well beyond 10% within the next 10 years.

We believe that these are more achievable than Apollo or Konza City projects for two main reasons. One, the government has already committed itself to invest in the new Dodoma. Thus, new buildings, new water and power supply systems, new sewage and transport infrastructures. This means little added costs: just tweaking this and that to make the designs, well, smarter. These systems must be integrated to ensure the most efficient designs possible.

Two, many people will be moving to Dodoma along with the government. If the government maintains its current pace, we estimate the population of Dodoma to double within the next five years leading to a development of about 100,000 or so new apartments.

This means the investments in buildings and businesses are almost guaranteed. The smart thing to do is to promote public-private partnerships (PPP) whereby such investments, big and small, can be pooled together and organized to achieve magnificent outcomes.

Construction of houses the Tanzanian way should be discouraged, if not banned altogether. It has never worked well anywhere.

These two moves will take us a long way towards making Dodoma modern, but that is not synonymous to its being ‘smart’. A smart city is quintessentially a digital technology city. To achieve that Dodoma must be made ‘broadband ready’.

We will discuss the world’s best practices in achieving that objective in the next article. Unfortunately, if we in Tanzania had agreed to do things in the worst possible manner up to this point, we could have hardly done better.

Do you agree with the contents of this article? Kindly leave a comment and follow the author for more articles like this one in the future.

Source: Written by Charles Makakala
 
Thanks for the Informative article.
The approach from government's institutions and CDA has already proved that Dodoma will just end up being a normal city like others.
The planning of the new Dodoma is not offering any hope of being even close to a smart city.
The plan is to add more buildings to accomodate more offices and providing accomodation to people.
Your article could have been valuable if the task force (Dodoma city planners and policy makers) make agood use of it.
 
Project nyingi za nchi hii zinafanyika bila kuweka priority kwenye ICT lakini Dodoma ingekuwa mfano mzuri sana
 
Dodoma was not meant to be a mega city, in fact, it might remain as administrative city due to proximately to other part of the country. Dar, Arusha, Mwanza, Bagamoyo and many other will remain commercial cities same as SA, US, AUS. I'm always surprised when i hear people saying they will flock in Dodoma and life will be good, the place can't offer much other than being near to government officials and parliamentarians, and that is not suppose to be a good thing.
 
The criteria we use in Tanzania to name a place a city are equivocal. Population should not be the only criterion. Mbeya, Arusha, Mwanza and even DSM are all "huge villages" if we use other countries' standards.
 

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