Ghana has begun construction of a government-sponsored technology park it says will employ 50,000 people in ICT related jobs.
Estimated to cost $10bn, Hope City, located near Accra, is planned to comprise six towers including one more than 270m tall – which would be the tallest building in Africa.
Two of the buildings will be 60 storeys and the remaining three 42 storeys each.
It’s a busy time for "tech cities" in Africa. First, Kenya announced plans for a $14.5bn development called Konza Technology City, and now Ghana is getting in on the act.
Ghana’s $10bn Hope City aims to provide 50,000 high-tech jobs (Credit: RLG)
Launched 4 March by Ghana’s president John Mahama, Hope City is a partnership between the government and state-owned technology company RLG Communication. Microsoft is also reported to be collaborating on the development.
Developers want Hope City to be "the sub-region’s premier business location for high-performance computing, advanced communications and large-scale data handing", according to a report on the Ghanaian government’s website.
The striking visual concept of the towers, based on traditional Ghanaian architecture, has been developed by Italian architects, OBR.
Organisers say Hope City will also have a university for 5,000 students.
The head of RLG Communications, Roland Agambire, told the BBC he wants Hope City to make Ghana globally competitive.
"What we are trying to do here is to develop the apps [applications] from scratch," he said. "This will enable us to have the biggest assembling plant in the world to assemble various products – over one million within a day."
