How Tech Will Make this the Most Liveable City in Africa by 2030
eThekwini’s journey to becoming a smart city
eThekwini Municipality – also known as the City of Durban – is a coastal South African city with big ambitions: To become “the most caring and liveable city in Africa by 2030.”
To achieve this vision, the Municipality is digitally transforming every aspect of how the city is run – harnessing data tools not only for the sake of efficiency but to radically improve the quality of services that residents, investors and visitors can experience.
The city believes that by becoming a connected, well-governed, data-driven “smart city”, it can fulfill the vision it has set for itself. But digitally transforming an entire city is no easy feat. So, to achieve an ambition of this size, eThekwini partnered with a tech provider experienced in projects as large scale as this. That’s why Microsoft became an obvious choice.
Municipal transformation
Digitalization has been at the heart of eThekwini’s ambition from the start. As Robert Dlamini, Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the city, explains, “eThekwini Municipality has a vision of being the most liveable city by 2030. And one of the principles of that vision is to be a digitally transformed city by leveraging technological advancement.”
Transformation at scale isn’t easy for any organization. But eThekwini had a fundamental obstacle to overcome first: Unreliable infrastructure. “We had a problem where the system was not stable. We were losing data, and it was not up to date,” says Lungi Khuzwayo, Deputy Head of Fleet Systems and Compliance.
With that in mind, Microsoft started by helping the city migrate its IT to Microsoft Azure cloud – hosting eThekwini’s IT on Microsoft’s dependable, secure servers. This immediately solved the problem of local storage and unreliable power and connectivity issues.
Becoming a smart city
When COVID-19 hit, Microsoft’s stable infrastructure quickly proved its worth, providing the connectivity eThekwini Municipality needed to continue delivering services to citizens while working remotely.
The council also made extensive use of Microsoft Teams to communicate with citizens and business leaders, inviting both groups to attend virtual meetings, keeping them directly updated on the progress of the pandemic, and the council’s response.
Meanwhile, Microsoft helped upgrade the technology in use across the city. Parboo Sewpersad, Durban Metro Police Senior Superintendent says, “Microsoft has introduced dash cams, body cams, tasers and the ANPR [Automatic Number Plate Recognition] camera systems. The data we capture can be used to mitigate crime.”
Thanks to the Azure-based departmental integration, that data can also improve service in other departments and inform future planning and policy.
Data-driven planning
The data analysis tools available within Microsoft Azure ultimately made the most impact. Dr. Sandile Mbatha, Senior Manager, Research and Policy Advocacy Department, says that the department “…shifted the thinking around the use of data and the decision-making process to start utilizing data and artificial intelligence to get much deeper insights into our various business units to unblock any complexities that exist.”
Dr. Mbatha believes this process is fundamental to achieving eThekwini’s vision, “Using data and AI, and the dashboards we have created has set us on the path of becoming a data-driven smart city. A listening, engaging, and responsive city, leading to becoming the most liveable city by 2030 as set out in our city vision.”
With this holistic, evidence-based approach – enabled by Microsoft data tools –eThekwini Municipality looks set to achieve its aim.
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