Barriers to the Adoption of Smart Housing Concept in African Smart City Projects

Abstract

A city can be termed smart when it is able to effec vely apply ICT and other smart technologies in achieving intelligent solu ons to everyday challenges posed by the city. In view of this, smart housing concept leverage on smart technologies and data to solve housing problems in smart city projects. In most African smart city projects, the problem lies with the numerous hindrances on techniques to theadop on of Smart housing solu ons.The ini a ve of Nigeria Smart City Ini a ve (NSCI) is to transform Nigerian major urban centers from tradi onal dysfunc onal ci es to modern, efficient, responsive ones capable of sa sfying the needs of present and future genera on of Nigerians.Using Akwa Millennium City project in Nigeria, this study examines the barriers to the adop on of smart housing concept in African smart city projects. Structured ques onnaires were purposively administered to all the staff of Akwa Millennium City project while all retrieved ques onnaires were found suitable for analysis. Descrip ve sta s cs was employed to analyze the data collected from the respondents. Findings depicted that the major barriers could be classified as socio-economic, technical and policy hindrances in the delivery of smart housing in Akwa Millennium City project in Nigeria. It's noteworthy that smart housing concept could be unaffordable due to the most perceived barriers (such as limited consumer demand, retrofi ng of exis ng homes and buildings, lack of financial and financing incen ves, high cost of development, and smart technology as divisive, exclusive or irrelevant) in the development of African smart city projects. This study therefore recommends that developers should focus on socio-economic a ributes in the adop on of smart housing concept to achieve an effec ve planning of smart city projects in Nigeria and Africa at large.