Dubaifrika.

Last June reclamation and construction work began for La Cite du Fleuve; a huge Dubai-like city that is to be built in... the Congo river. Jason Stearns recently had a post on this. According to the plan, La Cite du Fleuve will span 375 hectares, include 10,000 apartments, 10,000 offices, 2,000 shops, 15 diplomatic missions, 3 hotels, 2 churches, 1 university, 3 day care centers and a shopping mall. It will take 8 years to build. The project is financed by Mukwa Investments via Hawkwood Properties, a Lusaka based company that serves US and European investors. Here are two pictures after doing a bit of google-ing:

I was first planning to post my following, very constructive reaction and leave it at that: WTF!

While I am still of that same opinion, this project also reminded me of a recent TED talk by Stanford economist Paul Romer. In brief Romer's idea to help countries break out of poverty is the creation of "charter cities". The latter are city-scale administrative zones governed by a coalition of nations. On his website he discusses three cases: (1) Canada develops a Hong Kong in Cuba, (2) Indonesians flock to a manufacturing hub in Australia, and (3) states in India compete for the chance to build a charter city. What about a fourth one: (4) La Cite du Fleuve? Watch the TED talk or check out the website on Charter Cities.

Hattip to Caroline (the hub of CSDS) for the blog's title.