Greenfield Visions - Charter Cities and New Cities for Urban Prosperity in Africa

By 2050 the African urban population will increase from 548 million today to 1.34 billion people. This event discusses a widespread but under-studied phenomenon, which is the emergence of new, private cities in Africa, often combining characteristics of special economic zones. This model is a novel strategy to address the demand for serviced urban land that accompanies rapid urbanization.

Between 2000 and 2020 159 new global city projects have been announced, compared to 126 in the entire period from 1945 to 1999. Only six of these are in the global north, compared to 50 in East Asia and the Pacific, 49 in the Middle East and North Africa, and 43 in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Africa ten new cities are under construction in Rwanda, nine in Egypt, seven in Nigeria, four in South Africa, four in Morocco, and four in Algeria.

Many of the cities are narrowly focused on producing housing, while others include an economic development component. As a networking event, the core purpose is to create a space for practitioners, policymakers and curious individuals to learn more about this fascinating new part of the urbanization landscape and how its can transform new cities in Africa.

The cities, often built on greenfield land adjacent to existing economic or political centers, attempt to bypass the perceived legacy challenges of existing urban areas through targeted capital investments in infrastructure and services, offering residents a higher quality of life. However, the resulting urban constructs are often out of reach for many residents, and questions have been raised about their scalability and viability as a solution for urban Africa.

Recent efforts to pair new city construction with special jurisdictional status can potentially overcome many of the constraints that have forced earlier efforts toward exclusivity, including restrictive zoning and land use regulations that require high levels of land consumption. Given the implicit regulatory flexibility of these new models, they have the potential to remove many of the obstacles that have impeded formalization of the majority of urban dwellers in Africa, while also offering substantial possibilities for the development of new, export-led manufacturing and services sectors.

New urban visions, developed and pioneered by Africans, are showing how to produce more inclusive new cities that can meet the housing and land needs of a larger share of the population. Those ideas include the establishment of green, agriculturally driven cities, establishment of cities focused on promoting endogenous economic growth and incremental development, and the creation of new urban spaces that allow formalization of the informal economy, including self-housing.

This event will start with a panel that explores the topic of new cities and charter cities, considering examples and current challenges. After sharing the knowledge and experience of the panelists there will be an open debate and discussion.