When Claude Borna enters the room, she is carrying a large silver flask in one hand that I suspect contains a secret fuel of some kind, but turns out to be green tea. As the managing director of the Sèmè City Development Agency, it’s her job to oversee an entirely new city-in-the-making, about 40 kilometres outside Cotonou, the economic hub of Benin. The first of five phases is set to be operational by 2026 so the work is heating up. Borna also brings along two phones, AirPods, glasses and a floral-covered notebook. Her face is framed by a signature fan-shaped plume of hair, her slender figure elevated with on-trend bright green platform shoes. 

We sit at a conference table in an air-conditioned room with blank walls. The rest of the agency’s headquarters, still fairly new, is similarly unadorned (save for the waiting room, where a sign stares back at visitors: Believe in yourself). As of late 2023, the new Sèmè City is also a blank canvas—it does not yet exist outside these offices and a prototype campus alongside, Sèmè One. I’ve seen the digital vision of what it wants to become: a gleaming blend of research lab, entrepreneurial hub and educational institution comprising 336 hectares. But I am here today to better understand the “messy labor and politics” that citymaking in the global South involves. It’s not all glamorous big-picture stuff; it’s also about paying attention to minute details. Like whether this cover for a brochure or that one looks better. (She thinks the one may be a bit angular and conjures up the image of Christmas trees. She is right.)

We begin with Borna’s own entrypoint into the project before covering some of its key aims, and conclude with a riff on The Woman King. That’s a Hollywood style re-imagination of the very location where this ecocity will be built—a town called Ouidah. Much of the movie’s production was shot elsewhere, which is exactly the sort of scenario Borna hopes to shift once Sèmè City leaves the green screen for reality.

Kim Gurney: When and how did you come to join the Sèmè City project? 

Claude Borna: I was working in entertainment actually—Sony Pictures—in London. I was previously working in tech, and then the film industry. I’m from Benin originally, although I did not grow up here. I happened to meet with Mr [Patrice] Talon, who is now president, but he was not president yet. And talking about the potential of the digital economy in Africa, in Benin, this is how it all started. In a way, even the premises of what Sèmè City is today were conversations with him before he ran for president. It was a project in his campaign manifesto… So I guess this is what motivated me to come here—seeing that vision come to life.

I joined here [mid-2016] and I started working at the Presidency first, for over a year.
A small group was tasked to work on the feasibility study for the project. We hired a consultancy firm, Deloitte, to do that. It was not technical, just finding [whether] there really is a need for a project like this one. What is the potential catchment area in terms of attracting students, entrepreneurs, researchers? What are the similar hubs that exist? What are the difficulties and opportunities? … A proper SWOT analysis. Following that, in 2017, we got the go-ahead to create the agency. 

KG: How did you find the shift to working in the public sector? 

CB: This is what I teach my entrepreneurs and I strongly believe in it: “iterate, fail, move on.” That is what makes you resilient and successful. It’s difficult to do that in the public sector. When you plan a year ahead and … the stakes are different, and the bureaucracy as well is something I had never known before. So this is the bane of my life. But the purpose, the reason why we do this, makes it worthwhile … You can’t do a project of this magnitude without having political will. I think in a way this is the number one success factor, and the number one risk as well. 

KG: David Harvey writes that you organise a city politically by seeing how the micro-structures come together. I can see how Sèmè City will enable the informal sector, but do the logics of that way of working come into the vision of the city as well?

CB: When we say informal sector, I think we might want to put some person behind that—who makes up the informal sector? What sort of education level, their ambition, their location. And I would say there are a number of people … university graduates. Maybe they graduated in a topic or domain that doesn’t lend itself easily to finding a job. It’s very interesting because if you look at how the zemidjan [mototaxi] started—it was, I guess, in the eighties. The students had not received their bursaries for over a year from the government. This is when the government was basically collapsing. And civil workers weren’t paid. So they started doing this [zems] to make money—saying OK, I will take you from point A to point B and you pay me. It was not an organised body of workers. It was just finding a way to earn money, and this is how it started. Some people who wind up in certain positions … I don’t even know if they planned what they were going to do after school. It’s also cultural here—getting a university degree, the whole family is very proud. It doesn’t even matter if you work after, it is an achievement in itself. So that informal sector would probably welcome the opportunity to retool, to get the tools, to contribute in a different way to their environment and to make more money in a job that is more fulfilling. I am not saying everyone; some people enjoy doing it, and it’s actually OK. 

KG: And to manage a business like that is actually quite complicated; the skillsets just aren’t as visible. 

CB: Absolutely. There is interesting work the Ministry of Finance is currently doing, transforming these motorbikes into electric bikes. And I would be very interested … to see how they retrain. But this is just one example. I will take another one. We are currently doing a lot of work understanding the needs to have a very robust fashion industry here. Very often when we talk about fashion, people think designers. That’s what we see. But it’s not the part that is missing here and that would make a difference—that’s in technical skills. Pattern making. And one thing we found out when doing the market analysis is that when people want to become a seamstress, they don’t learn pattern making here because it is math and they took it out of the curriculum. So you have people who are in the market who would say “I am a tailor” but they can’t actually produce in mass production because they don’t do pattern making. They would do a really nice dress, and you would come back and say: “Let me order a hundred,” and they can’t. So this keeps them at a [constrained] level … They don’t have access to greater markets than one [client at a time]. They can’t scale. So when we talk about informal systems, I think we have to really go into understanding [whom it comprises]. 

A part of the issue is the sort of training and education … It is not practical and not adapted to the job market. So we are making a bold bet, saying: “Okay, we are going to train people to be the best technicians.” Maybe they can even work in Benin, doing patterns for someone who is—wherever. The [United] States. Europe. Who cares. Then you are starting to build an industry that is much stronger than if you try and say: “Hey, I am going to find the best people who did the best designs,” and then they can’t even execute on their vision. 

KG: Are there processes within city-building to discover these kinds of entanglements?

CB: You start with some hypotheses. We are also humble in this process. We are not going to reinvent the wheel. If some things have worked elsewhere, let’s see [what] can be adapted here that’s applicable and makes sense in our context and with our resources. And then you test: this is what the scope is … You are starting to tap into a different so-called informal sector, because you have a different type of person—who tends to be younger and interested in seeing, “If I use digital tools, will that help me improve my business?”. At the end of the day, nobody wants to be left behind because they are not able to leverage new technologies … We also want to tap into people who may already be professionals, who may already have a degree but feel they need to learn something that is going to be more in line with what the market needs, or just curious about how they can use digital technologies to improve what they do.

KG: I guess people coming in and out of your existing campus programmes also tell you what is needed.

CB: Exactly, yes. They say: “You know, it would be great if we had a machine that does this and that.”
And you know what else they do? They trade skills within the [learning] community, which is something we never thought about. They say: “Okay, I will teach you computer design software and you can teach me how to use the laser printer, the 3D printer.” It’s very interesting … They ended up trading skills, which is a very ancient way of working. And it works for them. 

KG: Is there a public participatory element in terms of the city’s design process; and has there been any public discussion in that regard? 

CB: Now that we have the concept and the plans and are moving to the more detailed feasibility of the buildings and so on, this is when we want to involve the local authorities. So there is understanding of what the project is, and how they will benefit from it—it’s not a gated area within Ouidah, it should be an area where even local farmers can be welcome on campus. And in its construction, we should make sure the local community benefits from the social and economic development for the region. Small things that are already happening include the design students who are doing the entire rebranding of the city and presenting it to the Mayor. But what we really want to create is that “living lab” environment: if we have a place with innovators and researchers and bright students, let’s give them an opportunity to test their ideas. 

KG: Why is a data-driven process important? 

CB: One of the things [that needs more attention], and it becomes a barrier to raising further money, is accountability. If you don’t have data, you don’t measure, you don’t know if it’s worked or hasn’t worked, a new regime comes in and you go back to [making] the same mistakes … For us, it’s an opportunity to really understand what works and doesn’t work and have a different conversation with anybody who is interested in coming along on the journey. Also, data is an asset that we shouldn’t let others collect for us. People don’t see the wealth behind it. 

…Something that we suffer from in Africa is that people have very good ideas—actually, they have fantastic ideas. Frugality brings ingenuity. Sometimes people with very little do a lot. It’s very interesting watching someone who doesn’t have easy access to
water—when you see them washing their dishes, or clothes, you realise it’s an art. People have great ideas. But they never get beyond a certain point. Somehow in Africa we get stuck—maybe in my lab or bedroom,
I kind of know that it works, but it has not been tested with a greater number of people. It hasn’t been scaled,
or proven to work under different conditions. And it definitely doesn’t get to the level where it can be commercialised. What happens is … those other people come and collect the data! Then all of a sudden something comes back, rebranded … We need to return value to the people who came up with those ideas. Again—if you don’t measure and have data, you don’t know. One of
the things our entrepreneurs are struggling with is the opportunity to test their ideas—and even get first users. So creating that opportunity for them, I think it really helps.

KG: The flipside of that conversation is about how the Sèmè City initiative might speak out more globally.

CB: It’s how we position ourselves. We don’t care about anyone’s nationality—we couldn’t care less where you are from as long as what you do also has an impact here, creates value in our context—fine. To restrict by nationality would be a big mistake. 

KG: How does the geopolitical picture in the region likely impact upon Sèmè City plans? 

CB: The more projects like this there are, the more we win. If you look at the north of the region here—the frontier with Niger and Burkina Faso and extremism rising, the young ones that are targeted don’t have employment and education. If you leave that gap you are more at risk. So: we should have Sèmè Cities everywhere! … When we say education is our weapon, we are not joking. It really is. The more opportunities you give to young people, the less they are likely to enroll in some radicalised movement where they are being fed and paid. It is in every country’s interest to do this at a larger scale. Also, how do you have an impact in areas where the internet doesn’t go, the roads are not very good, how do you get them to also be included? This is a discussion we are also having with the World Bank. I don’t have an answer.

KG: Can you speak to the artistic and creative element—fashion, animation and film—how does that fit into the picture? 

CB: We signed an agreement with a broadcaster and a studio to co-produce a daily TV series and set up a studio here. I helped the team that worked on The Woman King—it’s Sony. We hired historians, but a lot of people here were very mad: “They shot it in South Africa; it doesn’t even look like Ouidah, Ouidah doesn’t have hills.” I told them, “Listen, no chance they film here.
We don’t have the infrastructure, the workforce or even the incentive package to attract this sort of production.” So that is what we are working on. A first project with the studio—just that one project means 400 jobs. A daily TV show is industrial [scale]. 

KG: What is the theme of the show? 

CB: It’s a campus with young people—they will shoot at Sèmè City. The proposal looked very much like what is going on here! They looked at other countries and they are choosing Benin. So that is one big project that potentially is a step change and catalyst for the screen industries. 

Another thing we are looking at is how we use virtual production, where you have green screens and can create a different décor. A skillset for virtual production is a similar tool to animation and video games. What I like about this is we are not catching up anymore. Studios in Europe, US are now getting to that technology and looking at training people to do this. It accelerated during Covid—studios investing in this, because people couldn’t shoot on location. So we are getting into this game early on. We are quite savvy with technology, and started animation workshops. Let’s position ourselves so we don’t go into that industry looking at doing things the way they were done twenty years ago [but] build it in a way that is modular and can be used for different sets. 

The other big project the government is doing is a creative and cultural district, in Cotonou. It’s an old train station that is being refurbished [by 2026], downtown near the port. This is another huge project where you have art galleries, shops and areas for co-working spaces and studios. We are involved because the fashion school is right opposite and the studios for our young fashion labels will be in the creative district, within that ecosystem. We know that a large percentage who are going to go into fashion and textiles will be self-employed or working for an SME. We don’t have an industry to employ them so giving the opportunity to show and commercialise their work is super important. Putting them in that environment gives them a great platform and more visibility. 

*This is a compressed and edited transcript of an interview conducted at Sèmè City headquarters, in Cotonou, on 14 November 2023.