A peek into green zones of the future

I took one look at Entebbe from the air and I was shocked: it is breathtakingly beautiful. Lake Victoria is huge, it’s like a sea. You can actually do lake cruises on it. The islands in there are many, some lightly populated. 

Our jobs keep us flitting across East Africa, but we actually don’t see the countries we visit. We arrive at night, sleep, wake up in the morning and head for meetings, leave the last meeting, grab some food and head out to the airport and most probably leave at night.

Flying into Entebbe on a clear day was amazing. So I will throw away the political column I was working on and write a new one about what we can do with these beautiful places and why we need to start dreaming futuristic settlements and land-use patterns.

First of all, because we’re poor, we look at our lands and their resources as places for getting some shelter and growing bananas. But you don’t need beautiful landscapes for that. In any case, how long will our environment be able to support natural agriculture? We need to start thinking 50 years ahead and develop land use to meet the challenges of those times.

I think Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda should harmonise their land use policies and maximise its value around Lake Victoria. 

As a first step, all around the lake, they should create premium zones and reserve them for tourism. The uninhabited spaces should also be zoned off, reserved and an integrated tourism development plan generated. The isolated islands can be hocked to billionaires and hotel chains. A tax on the land owners can then be used to support and develop fishing communities and provide training for the youth to work in the leisure sector.

Future land planning

I think sport fishing, sailing, flying and lake cruising can support a huge economy, create jobs and lots of wealth for the region. These activities can be regulated so that they coexist with an optimal level of traditional activities such as fishing and agriculture. 

Global warming will result in shrinking the lake’s water levels and I’d imagine agriculture, especially the activities that involve abstracting river waters. These should be replaced as an environment preservation measure.

In any case, we have to change how we live and how we grow food in order to survive global warming. Farming and other activities around water sources have no future. Those must be stopped and those ecosystems restored in the not too distant future. I think in terms of future land planning, settlements should be developed in spokes radiating out of service cities.

The service cities should be concentrations of people rendered necessary by the need to provide services from one core centre. It would make sense for the average citizens to live in self-reliable household units, where they can grow their own food and keep animals, possibly not just for their own use but for supplying those service cities. 

These household colonies are linked to service cities by high-speed rail and roads. So for example, one settlement spoke can run from Nairobi to Moyale, the settlement extending no more than 50 kilometres from the transport nerve. Another can radiate from Nairobi to Eldoret, and so on.

Developments in technology will allow us to use less land to produce more crops. I’d also expect that factories will move underground, freeing up land for greening to improve the environment. Certainly I’d expect that we will need less land to grow food and other activities. Services can be centralised so long as there is quick, reliable, safe and almost cost-free transport. In other words, if it takes 10 minutes from Moyale to Nairobi, why does your dentist have to be in Moyale?

The agriculture that now takes place in the water catchment areas has no future. 

Leisure and recreation

I’d expect a deliberate effort to push population away from the wetter areas and into drier, warmer areas where technology will support agriculture that would need less water and acreage. I’d also imagine it makes sense to start creating a culture of self-dependency at household level. That is, the average family should be able to grow its own food and keep animals on, say, an acre of highly mechanised and computerised household.

Factory farms can feed the service cities, with many of their activities moving underground. In such a future, huge recreation zones would be absolutely necessary. Areas closer to water bodies would be devoted to tourism and leisure activities. Further inland can be a zone of ordinary settlements.

Unplanned settlement is a luxury we won’t afford beyond the next 50 years. Climate change havoc will require that we plan and strongly control human settlements. It will also mean less space per person, making leisure and recreation an exciting future imperative.

We, as Africans, are not famous for our willingness to plan the future. But I think we have no choice because we have to start preserving and setting aside resources for a very difficult future. I think the lake region, with Entebbe as its hub, should be developed as the first futuristic tourism zone of East Africa. 

And we can enjoy those fun facilities as we wait for the future.

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