Ghana digitised its address system: its failure offers lessons to other African countries creating smart cities
LOUIS KUSI FRIMPONG, MATTHEW ABUNYEWAH, SETH ASARE OKYERE and STEPHEN KOFI DIKO SMART urbanism is about using digital technologies to address urban problems. Across the continent, digital technologies and smart initiatives have been applied in myriad ways, including crime control, urban planning and traffic management. It hasn’t always worked, however. Sometimes these initiatives have failed because the technologies weren’t well integrated into the local context. Or policies didn’t pay attention to social realities and technical requirements. Ghana presents one such example. The country launched a smart initiative in 2017: a digital system to give every urban property an address. It’s…