A sustainable path to Modernization: Transforming African cities

Africa is undergoing one of the world's fastest urbanization processes, presenting both opportunities and complex challenges. This rapid urban expansion is linked to the urgent need for resilient infrastructure, necessitating innovative governance frameworks across all dimensions of urban planning. The adoption of information and communication technologies in smart cities offers actionable strategies to enhance livability, optimize resource management, and strengthen municipal efficiency. Beyond cost reductions, these technologies empower cities to achieve technological leadership while fostering equitable citizen well-being. Recent research underscores that African cities are increasingly deploying smart solutions to position themselves as regional innovation hubs. Yet these advancements unfold against a backdrop of systemic challenges: fragmented electricity access, underdeveloped digital infrastructure, and persistent data reliability gaps. Despite these constraints, the pursuit of sustainable, efficient, and inclusive urban futures continues to drive investments in smart city technologies as urbanization intensifies. To contextualize these dynamics, this study introduces a novel index evaluating African countries' progress toward the sustainable development goals. This framework enables an analysis of how smart city initiatives influence broader national development trajectories. Departing from prior research that prioritizes cities already deemed “smart,” the study also examines emerging urban centers with untapped potential. While sustainable development goal 11 (sustainable cities and communities) remains a focal point, the work adopts a holistic lens, exploring synergies between urban development and multiple sustainable development goals such as clean energy (goal 7: affordable and clean energy), industry innovation (goal 9: industry, innovation, and infrastructure), and inequality reduction (goal 10: reduced inequalities). Methodologically, the study combines principal component analysis to construct a composite sustainable development goals progress index with hierarchical density-based clustering to map linkages between smart city projects and sustainability outcomes. Applied to Tanzania—a nation ascending three positions in sustainable development goals rankings (22nd to 19th, 2016–2022)—this approach revealed how optimized infrastructure planning (for example, the Iringa-Shinyanga Transmission Line Project) and community-centric strategies accelerated progress in electrification (goal 7: affordable and clean energy) while minimizing social disruptions. By bridging smart city frameworks with territorial sustainability, the research provides policymakers a replicable model to align urban innovation with inclusive, climate-resilient development. • A new method for assessing African countries' progress in achieving sustainable development goals. • Smart city technologies help improve life and ecology in African countries. • Smart cities contribute to achieving SDGs through energy efficiency and digitalization. • Example of Tanzania: Energy and transport projects accelerate development. • Chinese investments play a key role in the development of smart cities in Africa.