The Charter Cities Institute is partnering with the African School of Economics to open a campus in Zanzibar, ASE’s first East Africa campus, that will serve as an anchor tenant of a charter city. Our ACX Grant proposal is to found the first East Africa campus of the African School of Economics. The African School of Economics is a premier African university, founded by Princeton Professor of Economics Leonard Wantchekon. ASE presently has campuses in Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, and Nigeria and has sent students to top graduate programs and employers, including Harvard, Princeton, NYU, World Bank, IMF, and others. The Charter Cities Institute recently signed an Memorandum of Understanding with ASE about establishing a campus in Zanzibar. In addition to helping ASE become established as an accredited university in Tanzania and build out a physical campus, with the first classes targeted for launch in September 2024, CCI will work with ASE to create a research center and academic programming focused on urbanization, economic development, and public policy. ASE and this urban-focused research center will adopt a “teaching university hospital” model which brings together the theorists, researchers, policy advisors, real estate developers, and other professionals equipped to identify and build scalable solutions to rapid urbanization across Africa.
The Charter Cities Institute is a nonprofit dedicated to building the ecosystem for charter cities. CCI’s vision is to help build new cities with empowered governance to lift tens of millions of people out of poverty and into prosperity by harnessing rapid urbanization. This includes creating the legal, regulatory, and planning frameworks needed for rapid urban growth, influencing the global agenda through practical and academic research, engagement, and partnerships, and advising and convening key stakeholders like governments, new city developers, and multilateral institutions.
We recently started working in Zanzibar to establish a charter city, Fumba City. We are partnering with a local developer, CPS, that has built a successful satellite town, Fumba Town, outside of Zanzibar City. The town is 20 minutes south of the airport and 30 minutes south of Zanzibar City. Zanzibar is booming, attracting both investors and visitors as a tropical island destination, well-placed along Indian Ocean trade routes. Fumba Town has already attracted Wasoko, one of the largest e-commerce companies in Africa. The Indian Institute of Technology recently opened a campus a short drive from Fumba Town.
CCI is working with CPS and the government of Zanzibar to develop Fumba Town into a city. This includes 1) acquiring additional land, 2) delegating special economic zone authority to a 'city development company', which would create an attractive business environment with high quality infrastructure. The African School of Economics would serve as one of the anchor tenants of the charter city, as well as helping to spread the development model across sub-Saharan Africa and the world.
We have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the African School of Economics to open a campus in Zanzibar. We are currently working with ASE to develop an operating agreement that clearly delineates roles and responsibilities. ASE founder and Princeton University professor Leonard Wantchekon is also a CCI Board of Directors member.
CCI is the leading institution researching and advising on charter cities, new cities, and similar projects. Since 2017, our staff has worked on various elements of charter city projects in a number of countries, including legislative or regulatory projects with public sector partners (Zambia, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania), as well as case study, feasibility, urban planning, and other advisory services with city developers themselves (Honduras, Kenya, Zambia, Nigeria, Tanzania).
CCI is also a leading convener in the space, having hosted the first Africa’s New Cities Summit (https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/press-releases/charter-cities-institute-hosts-successful-first-ever-africas-new-cities-summit/) in November 2023 in Kigali, Rwanda with the Rwanda Development Board and Africa Infrastructure Development Association. Over 250 delegates and speakers representing governments, financial institutions, multilateral organizations, city developers, academia, and others attended the Summit. CCI has also successfully convened academic experts on the topic at world-class universities, co-hosting conferences at MIT and NYU featuring Nobel Laureate Paul Romer, as well as luminaries like Bill Easterly, Ed Glaeser, and Alain Bertaud. Finally, multiple members of our staff, including Executive Director Kurtis Lockhart and three members of the CCI Research staff have semi-permanently relocated to Fumba Town in order to help drive the project forward.
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$100,000. The main question is whether ASE can launch the first cohort in September 2024 or whether we have to delay until 2025. $100,000 would substantially increase our ability to launch a cohort in 2024.
A copy of the memorandum of understanding between CCI and ASE, as well as the ASE pitch deck, can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1g5zrM_p-HkMfU2Tz2EApMpbfsRzVGIxF?usp=sharing.
Our definition of success is that (1) ASE Zanzibar opens in September 2024 with an initial cohort of 50-75 of the most talent undergraduate and masters students across Africa (25% w/o grant, 50% with grant) and (2) expands to over 1,000 students by the fifth year of operations and and becomes a top five East African university (50% w/o grant, 60% with grant).