building cities: @ccidotcity
Washington DC
Joined March 2014
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Mark Lutter retweeted
We sat down with Jeremy Gorelick, who leads the Cities Investment Forum, to talk about getting city projects funded. Jeremy has spent 15 years on infrastructure deals across Africa and has helped mobilize $10.4B.
“This is in fact a perfect matchmaking tool between seekers of capital and providers of capital in a way that both of them can talk meaningfully and already be self-selecting to be at an event like CIF.”
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Most existing African special economic zone frameworks are outdated, focusing on tax concessions.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.