INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGY

AI

The report assessed 61 major cities across 39 countries based on five areas of intelligent city maturity: outcomes, strategy, adoption, ways of working and enablers. London topped the overall ranking, followed by Dubai, New York City, Washington, DC and Amsterdam.

African cities ranked considerably lower in overall maturity, with Johannesburg at 58, Casablanca at 59, Cairo at 60 and Lagos at 61. BCG classified all four as“ Developing”, citing challenges including digital infrastructure and access to startup funding.

However, the research found a contrasting picture when it came to residents’ willingness to embrace AI. Cairo, Lagos and Casablanca were placed in the“ AI Enthusiasts” cohort, supported by youthful populations, with more than half of residents in the three cities under the age of 35.

Casablanca also achieved a global top 10 position for AI adoption and smart city app usage, outperforming a number of more established international cities. and enable their AI ambitions and how effectively those ambitions translate into meaningful improvements in people’ s lives.”

BCG identified a relationship between the frequency with which residents use generative AI and their optimism about its future impact. Residents using AI most frequently were also more positive about its potential to improve productivity, opportunity and quality of life.

Cities across Africa, Asia and the Middle East demonstrated particularly strong GenAI momentum, combining relatively high usage with optimism about the technology’ s future impact.

The findings suggest African cities do not necessarily need to wait for world-class infrastructure before using AI to improve urban services. Instead, BCG said cities could adopt a“ focused specialist” approach, deploying targeted AI services addressing immediate resident needs while gradually strengthening their broader capabilities.

Digital services could be delivered through channels residents already use, supported by partnerships between governments, businesses and local innovation ecosystems.

However, moving to higher levels of intelligent city maturity will require African cities to address what BCG describes as“ soft enabler” gaps, including venture capital availability, technology talent retention and institutional AI governance. Municipal governments across the continent currently deploy a relatively limited number of AI use cases.

The index also showed there is no single model for intelligent city development. While London ranked first overall and led on resident outcomes, Madrid led on strategy, Dubai on adoption, New York City on ways of working and Amsterdam on enablers.

BCG said stronger-performing cities typically combine technology, data and infrastructure with talent, funding, governance and innovation ecosystems. It also identified smart city applications, AI-enabled services and stronger start-up ecosystems as factors associated with improved outcomes.

The report recommends that cities establish long-term strategic priorities, strengthen governance and public-private partnerships, scale proven AI-enabled services and continue investing in data, infrastructure, talent and innovation. •

“ AI is a key foundation of the intelligent city, and AI adoption and optimism are not confined to the‘ usual suspects’ technology hubs,” said Akram Awad, managing director and partner at BCG and co-author of the report.“ Cities around the world are creating value for residents in different ways and from different starting points. We built the Intelligent Cities Index to provide an objective, holistic view of how cities shape

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INTELLIGENT CIO AFRICA www. intelligentcio. com