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Innovations and technological advancements in telecommunication play an important role in the development of smart cities, Hilda Mutseyekwa, the Postal and Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ)’ s Head of Economics, Tariffs and Competition has said.
She was speaking at a workshop in Harare, as a representative of POTRAZ Director-General, Dr. Gift Machengete, held on the topic “Telecommunications Innovation and Inclusive Smart Cities: Opportunities for Zimbabwe.”
The Smart Cities Council defines a Smart City as one that uses digital technology for all city functions. Similarly, the World Bank defines a smart city as a technology-intensive city that offers highly efficient public services using information gathered in real-time by thousands of interconnected devices.
Mutseyekwa said telecommunications infrastructure and innovations are the foundation on which Smart Cities are modelled.
“Smart cities will focus on data-driven and connected infrastructure, which will lead to higher adoption of technologies like AI and 5G, leading to increased spending towards technology.
“The first building block of any smart city is reliable, pervasive wireless connectivity. The advent of 5G technology is expected to be a watershed event that propels smart city technology into the mainstream and accelerates new deployments through the Internet of things (IoT), Mutseyekwa said.
Under the Smart Cities Initiative, Zimbabwe formally launched its smart city blueprint named the Zimbabwe Smart Sustainable Cities Initiative in March 2018 in line with the Vision 2030 Agenda.
The Zimbabwe Smart Sustainable Cities Initiative Green paper lists access to clean water, beautification of the city, improved health delivery, and the establishment of sufficient public transport as some of the objectives of Zimbabwe’s attempts to create smart cities.
Under this initiative, the Operating model being pursued is the Public-Private Partnership model. The Zimbabwe ICT policy and supporting legislation such as SI 137 of 2016 on Infrastructure Sharing are some of the key enabling legal frameworks under the Zimbabwe Sustainable Cities Initiative.