The Latest Brand of Tech City Dreams: Virtual Residents
A Zanzibar initiative to build a “cyber city” is part of a broader tech-fueled effort to create alternative governments.
A rendering of plans for Dunia Cyber City in Zanzibar, with housing for several thousand people — and digital infrastructure for many more.
Credit: OurWorld
Near the tip of the Fumba Peninsula, a thumb of land jutting out of Zanzibar Island’s western coast, invisible lines delimit a nondescript rectangle of 71 hectares (175 acres). Right now, nothing is there but dirt and wild vegetation. But in early July, when Florian Fournier guided a small group of technology entrepreneurs across the area, he told them that patch of land would become a Cyber City.
French-born Fournier is the co-founder of OurWorld, a technology venture creator firm headquartered in Mauritius. The company is working with the government of Zanzibar to develop and operate a special economic zone – Dunia Cyber City – aimed at attracting tech workers and businesses to the semi-autonomous region of Tanzania. “They want it to become for East Africa what Singapore became for South-East Asia,” Fournier said in an interview.