Nigeria’s tech outfit, Itana, partnered with Binance and the Charter Cities Institute to build a physical tech hub near Lagos, but the plan has sparked controversy.
A novel idea in urban planning, “Charter cities” entails building communities from the ground up with the express purpose of promoting technology innovation, economic growth, and sustainable development. These cities have the most modern infrastructure and are run by private companies or joint ventures of public and private organisations. The goal is to establish a legal system that supports innovation and entrepreneurship, draws in top-tier talent from around the world, and fosters a positive business climate. In-development tech charter cities include NEOM in Saudi Arabia and Akon City in Senegal.
Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, one of Nigeria’s most successful tech entrepreneurs, and real estate tycoon Luqman Edu are the driving forces behind Itana, a prospective tech cluster that aims to house Nigeria’s internet workers and foster a new generation of software unicorns. The founders envision the finished city as being somewhere between the glittering spires of Dubai and Delaware, the small US state that is the registered home of more than 1.5 million companies from all over the world. They plan to do this by taking advantage of the preexisting tax breaks offered by the Lekki Free Zone to attract itinerant entrepreneurs.
Omolade Adunbi, professor of Afro-American and African studies at the University of Michigan and author of Enclaves of Exception: Special Economic Zones and Extractive Practises in Nigeria, asserts “that the moment you are inside the zone, you are outside of the Nigerian state,”. The idea behind the zone was straightforward: lure multinational corporations to build a prosperous industrial cluster and watch as freshly created cash flows outward to the rest of the economy.
In practise, this entails creating a digital free zone where businesses that sign up for digital residency can take advantage of customised tax, company registration, immigration, legal, and offshore banking rules. The physical city of Alaro City, a joint venture between the Lagos State Government and Rendeavour, an African-focused development company with shareholders from the United States, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom, will come after the digital zone. Alaro City is an urban development project located in the Lekki Free Zone.
Itana wants to develop into Africa’s Silicon Valley. Private city initiatives and special economic zones, however, have traditionally found it difficult to materialise as the beacons of wealth they were initially marketed as. Critics of such initiatives claim that they merely serve to enrich the wealthy and run the risk of escalating the economic inequality that has long been a source of strife in Nigeria. Adunbi claims that the ideology guiding low-tax, pro-business outposts on the outskirts of nation-states is “antithetical to the progress of Africa.”
