Smart Infrastructure Development Makes Smart Cities—Promoting Smart Transport and ICT in Dakar

Abstract

A smart city is viewed as a sustainable, inclusive and prosperous city that promotes a people-centric approach based on three core components and seven dimensions. The three core components are Smart City Foundation, Smart ICT and Smart Institutions and Laws, which in turn are the pillars of the seven dimensions of a smart city: Infrastructure Development, Environmental Sustainability, Social Development, Social Inclusion, Disasters Exposure, Resilience, and Peace and Security. The three components together with the seven dimensions make a Smart Economy. Infrastructure development has several elements across various social, economic and environmental dimensions. Here, our analysis focuses on those connecting people to several categories of services, particularly transport and ICT infrastructures. The first section analyses the classical option of connecting people to services through non-motorized means or motorized means of transport. The interaction between the development of urban spatial patterns and transport is thus a key factor shaping accessibility in cities both in physical and in socioeconomic terms. To access to services such as work, to the health centers, to the school or to the market among several other destinations, the share of motorized means is 40 % (public an private) compared to 60 % for the non-motorized means, mainly by walking. The public transport sector is predominantly informal (95 % against 5 % for the formal sector). Turning informal transport sector challenges to opportunities in the smart city making is a call along with the enhancement of the public sector with the introduction of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and other higher efficient means of public transport. In the absence of affordable, reliable public transport, the poor are no choice rather walking to access to services. It is urgent to make streets friendly to pedestrians with sufficient public spaces for social interactions. Today, it is recognized that the information and communication technology (ICT) development is an important enabler of accessing to services and must be integrated in the planning and management of transport systems. For these past 15 years, the Senegalese government has taken various steps to create an environment favorable to the development and use of ICT at all levels. It has created legal institutional framework to support regulatory mechanisms on the development and use of ICT and has also introduced ICT platforms such as E-Governance, E-Education, E-infrastructure and supports education and training on ICT. The second presents different forms of ICT infrastructures in the creation of smart, digital city.