The Safe City Africa Summit held today in Cape Town, has provided a platform for more than 400 delegates representing industry leaders and governments from all over Africa to share insights development trends and expertise on the issues of public safety in cities.

The summit, hosted by Huawei, showcases technology that resembles high-tech wizardry from the imagination of script writers in Hollywood. However, with the fast pace of innovation in technology, this kind of convergence in software is neither futurist nor farfetched. The Chinese telecommunications enterprise, according to Li Peng, would like to reiterate their commitment “work hand in hand with our partners to provide Africa with an innovative, one-stop, safe-city solution.”

The summit’s theme is ‘Innovative ITC makes safe city smarter’. According to a press release issued by Huawei, the acceleration of global urbanisation and the proliferation of the internet will drive the convergence of ITC and urban infrastructure. Countries worldwide are actively formulating plans for the development of safe and smart cities to seize new opportunities generated by global urbanisation.

Richard Chace, chairman of the Global Security Industry Alliance (GSIA), speaking at the event said, “I am very focussed on how urbanisation trends around the world are driving the specification and implementation of safe city technologies and solutions. I feel very strongly that successful safe city programmes build heavily on well-developed public-private partnerships that are designed to be ‘win-win’. The best use of technology is the one driven by sound planning that first seeks to define problems and then match the right manageable solutions for the long term.”

Forrester research principle analyst, Jennifer Belissent said, “Urbanisation means that a growing population depends on cities to meet their social, environmental and economic needs. Safety is fundamental to those needs, and public safety is a concern of city leaders. A safe city not only improves livability but also encourages growth and ensures sustainable development.”

This sort of ITC infrastructure requires reliable and fast connectivity, that is assessable to all citizens else it will only further emphasise the growing chasm between the haves and the have nots. This is a critical area for governments in particular to prioritise. A safe city means better use of resources, and having the correct ITC infrastructure rolled out en mass will assist in dealing with other issues such as energy and water shortages.