The African ~ Why Is Nairobi Africa’s Smartest City?

Ghetto Mirror – Photo by Jason Patinkin.

February 2015. For a second year in a row, Nairobi has been named the most intelligent city in Africa, though it failed to make it to the world’s top seven finalists.
According to Intelligent Community Forum’s latest rankings, “intelligent communities” are those that create an economy that can prosper in the “broadband economy.”
Nairobi was the only African city to appear on their shortlist of 21 hubs throughout the world for 2015.

There were many cynical responses on social media, with many pooh-poohing crime-plagued Nairobi again as “Nairobbery” and not imagining how, given how dangerous its streets are, and the maddening traffic, it can be a “smart” city.
However, that same danger is the source of Nairobi’s creativity. Nairobi has certainly fallen behind Lagos and Johannesburg, when it comes to making money from tech innovations, but it is ahead in conjuring up the smart ideas.

It has been widely documented in recent times that Nigerian tech entrepreneurs troop to Nairobi to hatch a clever idea, then take it back home to make cash from it.
You could say Nairobi writes great recipe books, but has no chefs to cook.