The Mohammed VI Polytechnic University will train Moroccan engineers in the design and development of smart cities to help combat demographic growth

Morocco will share its knowledge of smart cities in Africa

photo_camera PHOTO/MAP - His Majesty King Mohammed VI inaugurates the construction works of the city of Agadir

The North African nation will give anyone who needs it access to this information to combat Africa's main problems: population growth, digital transformation and the sustainable development of the continent. Morocco, as one of the main African powers, understands that it must help its neighbouring countries. To this end, the Alawi kingdom has provided training courses for Moroccan engineers to create and develop smart cities on the African continent. The advantages of these cities over existing African conglomerations are enormous. Among the main benefits are energy efficiency and the reduction of lost productivity due to traffic jams, the value of which is equivalent to 2% of Africa's GDP. 

The programme launched by the Moroccan authorities has a two-year duration and focuses on "smart city strategies in Africa". The initiative will help accelerate the digital transformation of major cities in the Kingdom of Morocco, such as Casablanca, Tangier and Marrakech. This master's degree on smart cities will be organised in partnership with the Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne in Switzerland. Classes will be held on the campus of the Mohamed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) in Ben Guerir, 257 km from the capital. Students will have at their disposal eight modules including connectivity, digital governance, big data and artificial intelligence. 

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"This training combines the fields of engineering and social and human sciences related to the smart city in Africa. Indeed, smart cities require skills that are somewhat different from those of conventional urban planning. It will therefore be necessary to massively train engineers and strengthen their capacities in the field of digital and urban systems, so that they are able to manage this technological minefield that is crucial for the construction of smart cities and thus for the continent's development," explains Jérôme Chenal, Professor of Urban Planning at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. Morocco is stepping up its efforts in terms of ecological transition. 

It is in this context that the Kingdom organised the fourth edition of the Smart City Expo in 2019. In Casablanca, the participants of this event focused in essence, on the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations addressed several topics such as Artificial Intelligence for infinite potential to improve the quality of services in urban areas. Moreover, since October 2015, Casablanca is the first African agglomeration to join the network of 25 smart cities selected by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) based in the United States of America. Since then, the Moroccan economic capital has been accelerating its digital transformation. 

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Africa's population growth is advancing by leaps and bounds. By the end of the century, none of the world's 20 largest cities will be in China, Europe or America. Meanwhile, Africa will be home to 13 of the 20, including the top three. According to the World Bank, urbanisation will be "the most important transformation the African continent will undergo this century", with more than half of the population living in cities by 2040, i.e. more than 40,000 people a day moving to cities. The result will be the birth of megacities such as Kinshasa, which by 2040 will have more than 35 million inhabitants, or the same population as Spain. 

As African cities grow and outgrow their global rivals, architects, urban planners, engineers and planners will face unprecedented social and environmental development challenges as nearly 60% of Africa's population will live in these megacities. Faced with this future situation, countries such as Uganda with its Vision 2040 plan, Ghana, Ethiopia and Mozambique are joining Morocco in seeking to solve the problems of the future now. While it may be tempting to dismiss long-term forecasts of African urbanisation, smart planning and investment is needed today to mitigate the risks of tomorrow. 

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Africa needs to spend between $130 billion and $170 billion annually to meet its basic infrastructure needs, and two-thirds of the urban infrastructure investments needed by 2050 have not yet been made. To cope with the unprecedented needs that will be imposed on African cities, and to ensure that the 1.3 billion Africans who will live in cities by 2050 can live in dignity, opportunity and security, the continent requires innovative thinking on the part of its policymakers, urban planners and architects. The "time factor", both political and economic, is important in the calculations that determine whether these infrastructures will be built. Unfortunately, time is precisely what African cities have the least of. 

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