In April 2015 multinational ICT firm Huawei hosted its inaugural Safe City Africa Summit in Cape Town and announced its strategy to engage with regions across Africa on the adoption of a consolidated IT platform - one based on the provision of public safety information in collaboration with multi-agency emergency and law-enforcement to help establish the 'Safe City' concept.

This week the ICT solutions provider showcased its latest solution, the Integrated Communication Platform (ICP) at the Global Safe City Summit, part of the Huawei Connect 2016 event.

According to developers ICP can pick up alerts from various channels via social media and the Internet of Things (IoT), as well as "quickly and extensively" access videos.

"It enables fast response and handling of security alerts, streamlined coordination of different first responder departments, and granular, informed command decisions," the ICT company states, adding that "the ICP serves as the brain of the command centre, picking up alerts from multiple different channels, and enabling unified voice and video communications. It provides dedicated video-conferencing channels for police command, expert consultants, and even first responders in the field. Voice, video, and data transmissions can be directed to any user group or devices via software-defined networks (SDN)."

The Summit focused on cloud computing, Internet of Things, mobile broadband and video as technologies that underpin integrated and fully visualised safe city systems.

According to Huawei technologies like IoT, LTE, cloud and big data analytics help security agencies to quickly develop strategies, and this is the framework for implementation of safe city solutions in specific countries in Africa.

Kenya is a case in point. Nairobi has also invested in a smart city solution and communications network, which links 1,800 surveillance cameras with 195 bureaus and 7,600 police officers.

Francis Gachina Gatuthu, iC3 Director, National Police Service, Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government, Kenya, said the command centre's eLTE system gives it access to CCTV coverage of major events and urban districts "so that it can respond to incidents with speed and precision."

As part of its Safe City drive in Africa, Huawei has underlined the impact of the rate of urbanisation in Africa, emergence of megacities and rise in security threats as a result of the expansion.