fbpx

Chinese Tech Firm To Connect Africa’s First ‘Smart City’

Chinese Tech Firm To Connect Africa’s First ‘Smart City’

From IT Web Africa

A Hong Kong company providing technology and telecoms services for Africa’s first ever “smart city” project in Johannesburg has quietly been building up a client base across the continent.

On Tuesday, PCCW Global – which is the international operating division of Hong Kong’s telecommunications service provider HKT – announced that it has inked a deal with Chinese urban developer Shanghai Zendai to provide telecoms and tech services for an R84 billion Zendai smart city project in Modderfontein, Johannesburg, South Africa.

The futuristic Modderfontein smart city is expected to be built as Johannesburg’s “new city centre”, covering an area of about 1,600 hectares.

The development, which is expected to take up to 20 years to complete, is set to include zones such as a central business district, an international conference and exhibition centre, entertainment centres, silver industry and retirement communities, international residential communities, an education district, sports area and light industry park.

And PCCW Global is planned to provide Zendai with services such as systems development and solutions integration, application development and management, telecommunications and information technology services, cloud computing services and e-commerce solutions.

But this is not the first major African deal that the Hong Kong affiliated company has struck.

“PCCW Global provides data and voice services, to both wholesale and enterprise customers, in more than 40 countries across Africa,” Mike van den Bergh, PCCW Global’s managing director of HKT Global Development Services, has told ITWeb Africa.

Read more at IT Web Africa