Kenya reports that its Konza City, hailed as Africa’s first AI-operated smart city, has won the Smart Gigacity Excellence Award at the World Broadband Association (WBBA) Broadband Excellence Awards in Vienna, Austria.
The State Department for Information, Communications and Technology and the digital Economy announced the award, which recognises Konza as a global model for gigabit-enabled urban development.
Valerie Rugene, Ambassador and Deputy Head of Mission at the Kenyan Embassy and Permanent Mission in Vienna, received the award on behalf of the East African country.
“Kenya accepts this honour not as the completion of Konza’s journey, but as a call to accelerate it and to share a practical, replicable model with cities across Africa,” she said.
The government believes this recognition affirms its leadership and sustained investment in fibre, data centres and digital public infrastructure delivered by the State Department for ICT and the Digital Economy under the Digital Superhighway initiative.
What makes Konza stand out is its 79-kilometre city-wide fibre backbone, connecting businesses, institutions and homes, alongside public Wi-Fi and smart poles equipped with closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras and environmental sensors that feed data into the Intelligent Operations Centre for real-time monitoring and faster responses.
The city also features smart drainage, a wastewater reclamation facility that recycles up to 90 per cent of treated water, an automated underground waste collection system and the Konza National Data Centre, which provides secure cloud and hosting services to the government and local businesses.
Konza is also home to the Open University of Kenya, the Kenya Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and Riara University, linking research directly to enterprise and innovation.
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