Turn into Tatu City on the outskirts of Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, and it feels like entering a different world.
Even the country’s most reckless drivers are transformed, slowing to a crawl and not tossing trash out the window — thanks to surveillance cameras and rigorously enforced penalties for speeding and littering.
For the 5,000 people who have moved into Tatu, a “startup city” that welcomed its first residents four years ago, the ruthless upholding of such rules makes the place appealing.
“Tatu has more law and order than other places,” said Valerie Akoko, a digital content creator who moved in two years ago. “I have never seen Tatu City dirty.”
Situated on 5,000 acres, Tatu City aspires to be what its name suggests: a city, privately owned, that its designers hope will eventually have a population of 2,50,000. It is already home to 88 businesses employing 15,000 people. They include CCI Global, which operates a 5,000-seat call centre, and Zhende Medical, a Chinese medical supply manufacturer.
There are similar projects around the world. But in sub-Saharan Africa, champions of the idea hope that new-city developments can address the continent’s urbanisation conundrum: While the growth of cities has rolled back poverty elsewhere, the region has largely been an exception.
Prosperity paradox
History suggests that as people move into cities, productivity increases, wages rise, exports grow. and a country gets richer. But in Africa, urbanisation has rarely unleashed such economic transformation.
In theory, Africa should be prospering. The continent’s urban population is set to grow by 900 million by 2050, according to the United Nations, more than the present urban population of Europe and North America combined.
But sub-Saharan Africa is urbanising while still poor. “Towns and cities in Africa today simply lack the tax base needed to invest in the urban infrastructure needed to accommodate the tsunami of people being added to their ranks in a short period of time,” said Kurtis Lockhart, director of the Africa Urban Lab, a research center at the African School of Economics in Zanzibar.
Weak property rights and political tensions can make the problem worse.
Even Tatu City has battled Kenyan politicians and politically connected businessmen. In 2018, the London Court of International Arbitration ruled in favour of the development’s multinational owner, Rendeavour, in a dispute with its Kenyan former partners, including a former governor of the central bank.
Last year, Tatu City’s Kenya head, Preston Mendenhall, took the unusual step of accusing the governor of the county where the development is based of extortion, saying he had demanded land worth $33 million in exchange for approving its updated master plan. The governor denied it and is suing Tatu City and Mendenhall for defamation. No ruling has been made.
Still, the case for building new cities, complete with new infrastructure, is compelling to some. The Charter Cities Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit, argues that, done properly, such projects could drive growth, create jobs and “lift tens of millions of people out of poverty.” The institute sees Tatu City as a model.
Yet building new cities is hard. Africa is littered with failed projects.
A handful have shown promise. Angola’s Quilamba city, whose construction began in 2002, is arguably the most successful, with a population of more than 1,30,000. It was built by CITIC, a state-owned Chinese company, but is owned by the Angolan government.
Experts agree that the private sector must play a role in African urbanisation, saying African states are too fiscally constrained to fill the investment gap themselves.
But leaving city-building to the private sector alone can cause problems, for instance by worsening inequality. The average price of a property at Eko Atlantic, a new-city development on the outskirts of Lagos, is $4,15,000, far beyond the means of most Nigerians.
Published – January 13, 2025 09:59 am IST
