Four years after President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that South Africa was getting a new smart city near Lanseria Airport in the western part of Gauteng, developers are yet to break ground on the site.
In his 2020 State of the Nation Address, Ramaphosa promised to establish the Lanseria Smart City as a “truly post-apartheid city” with homes for 350,000 to 500,000 people by 2030.
“A new smart city is taking shape in Lanseria, which 350,000 to 500,000 people will call home within the next decade,” he said.
“It will not only be smart and 5G-ready but will be a leading benchmark for green infrastructure continental and internationally.”
The first plans to build a smart city in this area emerged in 2007 and revealed that it would take approximately 25 years to build once developers broke ground.
Had construction started that same year, the city would only have been completed by 2032, two years after the timeline given by Ramaphosa.
However, the City of Johannesburg only adopted the provincial government’s plan for the development in May 2021.
In response to questions from a fellow ANC MP, human settlements minister Mmamoloko Kubayi revealed that the Greater Lanseria Master Plan, the first phase of which will include the establishment of the smart city, had been completed.
Kubayi said the bulk infrastructure to support the area still required significant investment.
Kubayi also revealed that the City of Joburg had spent R29 million of an urban settlements development grant on the Lanseria wastewater treatment works and the Lanseria sewer outfall.
“The City of Johannesburg has processed the necessary approvals for urban planning as required for planned development. This component is also registered under the water and sanitation project pipeline of Infrastructure South Africa (ISA),” Kubayi said.
“While this has been achieved, ISA reported that the human settlements component was not approved due to the lack of institutional and government arrangements.
“This has been resolved, not only for human settlements but for the government as a whole to enable a public-private partnership effectively,” the minister added.
The major stakeholders for the Lanseria smart city include Infrastructure South Africa, the Gauteng Growth and Development Agency (GGDA), Infrastructure Fund, national departments and its entities, the Gauteng province, the City of Tshwane, the City of Joburg, Mogale City and the Madibeng Local Municipality.
Kubayi said that the GGDA was in the process of appointing a transactional adviser to support the municipalities for the project.
MyBroadband visited the site of the smart city in January 2023 and found no progress had been made on the physical development — at least in terms of actual construction.
The latest satellite imagery of the planned site of the smart city confirmed that this remained the case.
A comparison of two Google Earth images — one from April 2020 and a second from March 2024 — showed that much of the area’s makeup had remained the same.
Aside from the airport and its related infrastructure, the biggest buildings were warehouses and offices in Lanseria Corporate Estate, where some expansion had taken place.
One big potential issue is an informal settlement right in the middle of the northern section of the planned development.
Moving this settlement and its residents will likely be required to build the city.
There are also a few small patches of buildings and plots which were already in place in 2020.
The wide-open fields to the north of Lanseria remained as during our visit in 2023.
Below is a comparison of satellite photos of the area where the the Lanseria smart city will be located and photos taken during an on-site visit in January 2023.
