It was reported this week that the City of Windhoek (CoW) budget for 2023/24 is dominated by electricity and salaries. Salaries accounted for 32% of the budget, although the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development recommended 40%.
This budget raised a few questions. The first one is, what really is the role of the municipality? Is it to make money and profit? Secondly, with the projected budget of 2023/24, how does it plan to make this city smart and caring, given its target of 2022, which is still not actualised?
A city can be defined as ‘smart’, when it incorporates scientific and technological innovation in both residential and commercial infrastructures, which provide high quality of life for its residents. This type of city also promotes the efficient management of natural resources and ecological environments, to create friendly and livable communities in harmony with nature. Scholars like Caragliu identified six factors that contribute to a smart city, which include: a smart economy, smart mobility, smart environment, smart people, smart living and smart governance.
Given the six factors mentioned above, does CoW’s strategy and budget prioritise factors that will ensure it fulfil its already outdated vision? Dr Licky Erastus and other scholars conducted a study titled: Smart City eReadiness Assessment – Is City of Windhoek Ready? In 2020, to assess how far CoW is with the implementation of its vision. The results showed that CoW has the knowledge pertaining to smart cities and has developed a framework, but as usual, implementation is a challenge.
In theory, smart cities are a fantastic concept, but do they practically work? Can Windhoek be a smart and caring city? And if it can, how will it look like? A documentary on Netflix titled “Live to 100: Secrets of the blue zones: the future of longevity”, visually showed that if CoW can incorporate the above six factors in its smart city framework and implement it, it can achieve similar and even better outcomes with the assistance of various stakeholders in including the government.
In the documentary, Singapore was featured as one of the countries in the world with the highest happiness rating. Although the county has 5.8 million people who live on a densely populated strip of land, people in that country have the healthiest life expectancy in the world. Singapore centres its sustainability development discourse on its people.
The government believes its people are its best natural resources, as the island does not have natural resources to rely on. Chan Heng Chee, the Ambassador at Large in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Singapore said, “to be in politics is about improving the lives of people. She further said that all government officials live by the mantra policy is implementation and implementation is policy”.
The Singapore government subsidises healthy food to make it affordable for people to buy and stay health. The government worked with beverage suppliers to cap the amount of sugar in drinks. They created 350 parks all over the country. In every residential area they created fully funded gyms with exercise programmes, because they want their citizens to exercise and stay healthy. Singapore also has stringent penalties for crimes, such drugs and murder, because the government wants its people to live in safety.
Singapore is a good example of a city that epitomises a caring smart city. Without people, cities will not exist. If the Namibia government can also see Namibians as precious natural resources and prioritise and centre their urban sustainable development agenda on the people. Then Namibia too can have happier and healthy people, who will contribute to the GDP and other economic indicators the government seeks to achieve. It can be a win- win situation.
*Morna Ikosa is a seasoned communications and stakeholder engagement consultant. With a specific affinity for sustainable development. Find her on LinkedIn or email her at micommunicationscc@gmail.com.
