Barriers To The Adoption Of Smart Housing Concept In African Smart City Projects: Case Of Akwa Millennium City

In as much as there is a wealth of research on smart housing, there is limited literature based on empirical findings from Africa. The aim of this paper is to examine barriers to the adoption of smart housing concept in Africa using a case study of Akwa Millennium City Project in Nigeria. The case study was chosen because is a premium multi-nucleic smart city project that is slated to redefine the concept of urban living in Nigeria and Africa at large. Structured questionnaires were purposively administered to all the staff of Akwa Millennium City project while all retrieved questionnaires were found suitable for analysis. Descriptive statistics was employed to analyse the data collected from the respondents. Findings depicted that the major barriers could be classified as socio-economic, technical and policy hindrances. It is noteworthy that smart housing concept could be unaffordable due to the most perceived barriers (such as limited consumer demand, retrofitting of existing homes and buildings, lack of financial and financing incentives, high cost of development, and smart technology as divisive, exclusive or irrelevant). This study therefore recommends that developers should focus on socio-economic attributes in the adoption of smart housing concept to achieve an effective planning of smart city projects in Nigeria and Africa at large.