Wakanda City Of Return

Nov 10

Location: Cape Coast, Ghana
Lead Architects: Unknown

A new proposed “smart city” project for Cape Coast in the Central Region of Ghana. The “City of Cape Coast” is reported to have “signed a memorandum of understanding with the African Diaspora Development Institute (ADDI) and two local companies, to pave way for the creation of an Ultra-Modern Smart City christened, the Wakanda City Of Return”. (Richard Kwadwo Nyarko for Joy Online)

The ADDI, have an ambitious vision to build many such “smart cities” across Africa. They also raise funds through donations on their website for various projects and broad issues such as “making a difference in the lives of those who are less fortunate”, “bridging the gap between the African Diaspora Youth and the Motherland Africa” and “women and youth empowerment”.

The chosen name of the smart city project - Wakanda City of Return - capitalises on ideas that stem out two projects that were created for and targeted mainly at African Americans, but also others of African descent across the African diasporas - Wakanda and The Year of Return.

Wakanda is a fictional African country from Marvel’s Comics Black Panther made globally famous by the 2018 film, while The Year of Return is a project launched by the government of Ghana in 2019 to encourage Africans in the diaspora to return to Africa (specifically Ghana) to invest, settle and spend tourism money in the continent. These ideas and commercial projects are invoked together in the ideas and promotion for this proposed Wakanda City Of Return.

From the ADDI website:

“The building of the African Centers of Excellence – Wakanda One – is one such program. The plan is to build five (5) Centers, one in each Region. The Center of Excellence will serve as a growth point for each region with downstream development in the rest of the region.
Our African Leaders recognize that for true change to come to Africa, it must include all its children in the Diaspora. They are therefore calling on all of Africa’s children in the Diaspora to come back home. The Diaspora have heard the call from our leaders and are ready to answer the call. “

This is not the first new “city” project attempted in Ghana. There has been the Itailian (Open Building Research) designed Hope City project (launched in 2013) which never saw the light of day even after a sod-cutting ceremony by then president John Mahama, and significant government investment. There has also been quite recently (in 2020) a charter city project that caused a lot of uproar across the African social media space when one of the founders - a young white American man - revealed how easily they got access to high-ranking officials including Mahamudu Bawumia, the vice president of Ghana to pitch their hastily conceived, poorly-researched project.

VIDEO: Wakanda City of Return Project