Today marks the start of Microsoft’s CityNext road show in South Africa, which kicks off in Cape Town.

Locally, CityNext is part of the software giant’s Microsoft 4SA initiative, which it is using to help bring our local cities bang up-to-date with modern standards. Speaking at the launch of the roadshow Microsoft SA’s MD, Mteto Nyati, said, “Cities make provinces. And provinces make up the country.”

That is to say, with great cities the individual provinces can prosper, and when that happens the entire country benefits.

And the CityNext initiative is all about helping those cities deal with next-generation challenges. Niral Patel, Microsoft’s Public Sector lead, says that it’s estimated 70% of the world’s population will by 2050 will be living in major cities, thanks to an estimated 1-million people moving to cities every day. This means we’re entering the age of cities – and these densely populated municipalities will have their infrastructure tested by the basic demands of those choosing to live nearby.

CityNext will encompass all areas of city management, including resource management, city administration, health and social services, infrastructure and planning, tourism, transportation, and safety. In an example of the latter, Microsoft cites a pilot phase of a technology that it’s deployed at the Honeydew police station in Gauteng, which uses a monitoring system that was developed by Microsoft and originally used in New York.

Microsoft also allayed fears that it would be using proprietary technology that would require government and city management to invest in its products. Explaining this to htxt.africa, Mteto Nyati said that Microsoft of today is not the Microsoft of old. The company would offer its products and technologies as solutions to integrate with existing plans and infrastructure that cities might already have implemented.

An approach that is more open to other platforms also means that cities should not have any issues when it comes to rolling out digital bus schedules or parking location applications on non-Microsoft platforms.

With the roadshow kicking off in Cape Town – one of a handful of local cities chosen for the project – Microsoft will be meeting with top brass to illustrate how it can help cities deal with tomorrow’s hurdles by planning today. Cape Town will also be used as a model city for testing and trialling technologies and implemented solutions, which could eventually be modified for rollouts in other cities.