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When I heard of Tarek bin Laden’s plan to construct ‘twin cities’ off the coasts of Yemen and Djibouti and a bridge connecting them, I was a bit perplexed. Of all the infrastructure scaling and planning that needs to occur in both Africa and the Middle East, it seemed odd to me to start from scratch with two entire new cities. The bridge is a wonderful idea in theory but unless the rumors of a highway connecting the coast to a city like Nairobi are true, it’s hard to imagine the added benefit to Africa. A large part of this perception seems to be due to a lack of interest (or trust) by African governments who’ve remained largely silent on the subject…

Yet oddly, aside from Djibouti’s, no African government officials were to be seen, no architect, no technical adviser to explain how the cities could run on renewable energy, and barely an engineer. None of the Noor City delegation noted that blazing hot Djibouti, with 800,000 people, is already acutely short of water and imports nearly all its food, that 150,000 of its people are “facing imminent starvation”, according to the UN’s World Food Programme, and that millions more are famished in next-door Ethiopia.

It’ll be interesting to see how this project progresses but it’s tough to argue with the plan to spend $200 billion in a region that is (quite literally) starved for jobs.

About the Author: Jonathan Gosier (Founder) is an American-born software developer, writer and social entrepreneur. He currently lives in Kampala, Uganda where he is working on two fronts: to encourage western businesses and investors to engage African entrepreneurs and to encourage the adoption of computers, programming and use of the internet in the developing regions of Africa. He is a huge advocate for promoting the ways in which a semantic web will benefit emerging economies in the world.

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