African Smart Cities & Innovation Congress 2026
When I took on the Presidency of Smart Cities Council on the first day of October 2022, one of the first notes I made to myself was a single word:
“Africa.”
One of the next notes I made was three words, and came upon reviewing our Mission Statement: “To create a safer, more enabled, resilient, equitable and sustainable world.”
They were three critical words that, with the help of many along the way, fundamentally reshaped our Mission: “To create a safer, more beautiful, enabled, resilient, equitable and sustainable world, for Everyone.
In 2022 the population of the continent of Africa was 1.44 billion, (today it is 1.58 billion). Of those people, 600 million had no access to electricity.
It was glaringly obvious where in the world our energy and activity needed to be focused in order to deliver maximum social, environmental and economic benefit for the maximum number of people.
Nearly four years later, Smart Cities Council and Smart Cities Council – Africa continue to expand our engagement across the beautiful, culturally, environmentally and resource rich continent that is Africa.
In this context I am extremely pleased to have been invited by Professor Ahmed Bendahmane to deliver a keynote address at the African Smart Cities & Innovation Congress in Laâyoune, Marocco, 27 – 29 October 2026.
The opportunities and needs of the people of Africa are diverse, and, in many ways, existential. At the same time, Africa has a unique opportunity in that it is unconstrained of the legacy and burdens of so many cities and towns of the economic north:
- Ailing infrastructure
- Critical capacity limits
- Legacy contracts with service providers designed to yield maximum profit for minimum service delivery
- Legacy financing models designed to burden cities and their people for generations
Africa has the opportunity through myriad greenfield projects to transform rapidly, and leapfrog into the ascendancy in many areas:
- ·Future energy
- ·Future mobility
- ·Biophilic design, biomimicry and bio-urbanism
- ·Data sovereignty
- ·Innovative financing models
The work of leaders in the African continent like Deputy Mayor Daouda Gueye, of Dakar, Senegal, Siaka Stevens and Idris Elba, and their Sherbro Alliance Partners team in Sherbro Island, Sierra Leone, and the transformative Mercantile Exchange Project in Democratic Republic of Congo, championed by His Excellency Minister Guy Luondo Mbayo, are shining examples of the aspirations and potential of the people of Africa.
SCC looks forward to continuing to play our part in the future of Africa, and building concepts into ideas, ideas into project frameworks, frameworks into executable, funded projects, and projects into the future that Africa deserves.
Join us on the journey at ASCIC2026.
Welcome to the August edition of “Urban Insights”.
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