Also, @davidpilling is speaking at our New Cities Summit. You should come newcitiessummit.org/

David's article is an important step in the recognition of the challenge and opportunity of African urbanization. The next step is thinking deeply about mechanisms to ensure African urbanization is an opportunity. Charter cities can play an important role

A focused effort to improve existing special economic zone law, bring in private sector developers, particularly for the entire project lifecycle, and expand the pipeline of projects, could play an important role adding industrialization to African urbanization.

Most existing African special economic zone frameworks are outdated, focusing on tax concessions. However, African governments are realizing the importance of scale, embracing larger, more comprehensive projects.

Tanzania is building 10k ha industrial park special economic zone, including residential, near a new port in Bagamoyo. thecitizen.co.tz/tanzania/bu…

The Democratic Republic of Congo is building a 40k+ ha new city outside Kinshasa. There is interest in creating a special economic zone for the city as well as relocating government ministries. nhood.com/en/content/downloa…

Sherbro Alliance Partners has negotiated a charter with Sierra Leone for Sherbro Island. It is a world leading partnership framework that could become a model for economic development. The key challenge is overcoming the cold start problem chartercitiesinstitute.org/p…

Charter cities are no longer speculative. There are opportunities to build charter cities, or implement charter city principles into projects, that could have high short term benefits.

The additional advantage of charter cities is that they're scalable, and more importantly, have a positive feedback loop. Charter cities reverse the logic of collective action. The developer benefits from economic liberalization, creating an incentive for replication

This is not a silver bullet. Much of Africa's urbanization has already occurred. Charter cities are also very hard. Identifying and securing land, getting political buy in, attracting capital, etc are quite difficult.

Key adjustments include, 1) bringing in private sector actors with the management capacity to execute on large satellite city developments, 2) a framework to allow developers to be residual claimants on land values, 3) legislation to create a competitive business environment

A partial solution to these challenges is, surprise, charter cities. New cities with better laws. By decentralizing regulatory and fiscal authority, Africa could help establish the same competitive dynamic that played a key role in Chinese urbanization and industrialization.

The decentralized regulatory authority in China was paired with fiscal decentralization. Cities had taxing authority and competed aggressively to establish industrial clusters. Even today, many African cities do not have taxing authority worksinprogress.co/issue/chi…

Africa, of course, faces different constraints. China had a long history of state capacity and managerial ability. Maoist China was one of the most anti-market systems in human history. Africa is comparatively more market friendly, more urbanized, and with lower capacity.

Chinese special economic zones played a key role in economic liberalization, creating labor markets, land markets, and financial markets, attracting foreign investment, and China's overall growth story.

My favorite quote about Chinese urbanization. "Except for the railway, post and telecommunications, banking, civil aviation, and national defense, all other management authority was delegated to the provincial government.” documents1.worldbank.org/cur…