Paper presented at the African Conference on Information Systems & Technology (ACIST), 7-8 July 2015 in Accra, Ghana. Smart city agendas of African cities Judy Backhouse University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa judy.backhouse@wits.ac.za Abstract Increasing numbers of people live in cities, making cities an important focus for development. Cities have common problems associated with many people living together comfortably: food supply, water and power, waste management, transportation, accommodation and keeping order. These problems are now being faced on previously unimagined scales. One understanding of Smart Cities is that new technologies, like new information and communication technologies, present opportunities to manage these problems more effectively. Africa is home to some of the oldest and largest cities in the world and several African cities are important centres of learning, political power and international trade. Research shows that the approaches cities take to becoming a Smart City relates to factors like economic development, geographic location and population. So it is likely that African cities approach smart city agendas in ways that reflect these contextual issues. This paper investigates how African cities understand the idea of a Smart City by examining what smart city agendas are being pursued in five cities on the continent and how these agendas are informed by local realities. The paper identifies competing discourses of social inclusion and development that benefit all city residents and smart-looking cities that benefit business and the elite. Keywords Development; Information systems; Smart City; Intelligent City; Smart city agendas; Africa 1 Introduction A key component of development is the rapid growth of cities and the increasing urbanisation of populations. Cities have always had certain common problems associated with many people living together comfortably: the supply of food, water and power, waste management, transportation, accommodation and keeping order (Freund, 2007). The idea of a Smart City has emerged as part of initiatives to improve city living. For example, information and communications technologies (ICTs) have the potential to contribute to the management and coordination of cities, to their economic success, and to improving the quality of life of city residents. Research done into understandings and applications of smart city concepts has been based in Europe and in emerging economies of the Far East. Little has been done to understand how this concept is playing out on the African continent, although many African cities are pursuing smart city agendas. Smart City application domains that are pursued by cities depend on factors such as the economic development, geographical location, and population density in the city (Neirotti et al., 2014) and so we might expect African cities to pursue agendas that reflect these factors and that these might be quite different from more researched contexts. As part of a larger funded project that investigates information systems for Smart Cities in Africa, this paper explores African understandings of smart city concepts as a prelude to designing more in-depth investigations. 2 Key concepts This section introduces key concepts in the analysis presented in this paper. 2.1 Smartness The term smart is full of interesting ambiguities. Smart is most commonly used to connote an appearance that is polished, fashionable or indicative of wealth. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED, n.d.), smart is an adjective that can mean “clean, tidy and well dressed” when applied to a person, “attractively neat and stylish” when applied