Why African Cities Must Fix Land Before They Go Smart
There is a popular vision of Africaโs urban future: sensor-lined streets that monitor traffic in real time, AI systems that optimise waste collection, and digital twins that model entire neighbourhoods before a single foundation is poured. It is an attractive picture. It is also the wrong place to begin.
The 2026 UN-Habitat State of African Cities Report makes the case with unusual clarity: if we want smart cities, we need to start with land. Not sensors. Not platforms. Not artificial intelligence. Land.
Land Is the Foundation of Everything Urban
Land is the essential platform on which cities are built. Housing, infrastructure, economic activity, and public services all depend on how land is planned, allocated, and managed. Every road that is constructed, every water main that is laid, every school or clinic that opens begins with a decision about land: where it is located, who controls it, and how its value is shared.
This is not a metaphor. It is the literal sequence of urban development. Before a city can become โsmart,โ it must first be governable, financed, and properly planned. All three of those functions run through land.
A city that cannot clearly identify who owns what, cannot value land fairly, and cannot capture rising land values for public benefit is a city whose smart systems will rest on unstable ground. Sensors cannot allocate road reserves. Artificial intelligence cannot resolve overlapping tenure claims. Digital twins cannot lay water pipes where no rights of way exist. Without sound land governance and planning, technological innovation alone cannot produce a truly smart city.
Can Urban Land Help Finance Our Cities?
This question is simple. The answer carries enormous consequences.
Cities need resources to provide the infrastructure and services that make urban life viable: roads, water, sanitation, drainage, public transport, health facilities, and schools. Across much of Africa, municipal budgets remain chronically constrained, and central governments often underfund local authorities.
At the same time, every new road, transit line, or planning designation increases the value of the land around it. That value is created by public decisions and public investment. Yet in most African cities, almost none of it returns to the public purse. Instead, it is captured by private landowners and speculative interests.
Land value capture, through betterment levies, property taxes, development charges, or land value increment taxes, exists precisely to correct this imbalance. The principle is straightforward: when public action creates value, the public should recover a fair share of it.
This is not merely a fiscal tool. It is the mechanism through which cities can finance the infrastructure their residents need, and through which the urban social contract becomes tangible. When citizens see their contributions returned as visible improvements, trust deepens and the fiscal base grows. When that loop is broken, services decline and compliance erodes.
Land-based finance is therefore not a technical side issue. It is a fundamental question of whether African cities can pay for their own future.
The Challenge of Informal Settlements
Any serious conversation about unlocking urban land value must confront an uncomfortable reality: in many African cities, rising land values are closely linked to the risk of displacement.
Informal settlements house a significant share of urban residents. Homes are often built without formal title, livelihoods operate outside formal permits, and communities have organised themselves for decades outside official systems. A land-value agenda that ignores these realities is not only incomplete, it is also potentially harmful.
Land-based development must not become synonymous with displacement. Instead, planning should focus on integrating informal settlements into the formal urban system through infrastructure, services, secure tenure solutions, and genuine participatory processes.
This is not charity. It is sound strategy. A city that regularises tenure, extends services, and brings informal residents into the fiscal and governance system expands its own revenue base, strengthens its social contract, and reduces the long-term costs of relocation, public health crises, and social conflict.
Examples such as property tax reforms in Freetown and land tenure regularisation in Rwanda point in a more inclusive direction. The challenge is to make inclusion the norm rather than the exception.
The Governance Question: Especially in Nigeria
These issues take on particular force in Nigeria. Land remains one of the most complex and contested aspects of urban development in the country.
Under the Land Use Act of 1978, all land in each state is vested in the Governor, who holds it in trust for the people. In practice, this creates a dual system: formal statutory rights exist alongside customary tenure systems that still govern large parts of the country, especially on the urban periphery. Multiple agencies at federal, state, and local levels often have overlapping or unclear mandates over planning, title registration, and development control.
The result is a governance landscape marked by fragmented authority, slow and costly land administration processes, weak coordination between institutions, and significant gaps where informality expands and land value leaks away from public benefit.
In cities such as Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt, rapid urban growth continually outpaces the capacity of existing systems to plan, allocate, and manage land effectively. Unlocking urban land value is therefore not simply a matter of introducing a new fiscal tool or technology. It requires stronger collaboration between federal, state, and local governments, clearer institutional roles, improved land records, and meaningful engagement with communities.
A road may be planned at one level of government, constructed across jurisdictional boundaries, maintained by another authority, and its land-value uplift captured, if at all, by whichever institution moves first. Without better coordination, even the best-designed land value capture mechanisms will struggle to deliver results.
The Real Question
More than half of Africaโs future urban footprint has not yet been built. In most other regions of the world, that scale of expansion occurred decades ago. Africa still has the opportunity to shape it deliberately.
The next decade will determine whether the continentโs rapid urbanisation becomes one of its greatest economic assets or one of its most significant missed opportunities.
The land is already generating value. The real question is who captures that value, and for whose benefit.
Perhaps the question we should be asking is not simply: โHow do we make our cities smarter?โ
Perhaps we should first ask: โHow do we make the foundations upon which our cities are built more strategic, inclusive, and resilient?โ
For the African Smart Cities Innovation Foundation, that conversation begins with land.
Smart cities need smart land governance.
