London, Dubai, New York City, Washington DC, and Amsterdam top the rankings of the world’s most intelligent cities, according to new research from Boston Consulting Group (BCG), but African cities do stand out in one major aspect – AI adoption.
The top ranked cities excel in different areas and none of them lead across every domain, underscoring that no city has mastered every relevant dimension. Intelligent city leadership is defined by different combinations of strengths rather than a single model. Further, even leading intelligent cities have room to grow in maturity across specific dimensions as residents’ expectations increase with fast-evolving technology, including AI.
The report, BCG’s Intelligent Cities Index 2026: How AI Shapes Urban Living, is the firm’s inaugural assessment of how 61 of the world’s biggest cities across 39 countries use technology to serve their residents and businesses.
The Index evaluates cities across five domains of intelligent city bcg afrmaturity: outcomes; strategy; adoption; ways of working; and enablers. A city’s overall maturity level reflects its combined maturity across domains – leading, accelerating, emerging, or developing.
African metropolises lead in citizen AI appetite
The report reveals an interesting urban trend across Africa’s major economic hubs: Johannesburg (#58), Casablanca (#59), Cairo (#60), and Lagos (#61). While all four cities currently sit in the report’s “Developing” maturity tier due to deficits in digital infrastructure and startup funding, the citizens are among the most active and optimistic AI adopters globally. Supercharged by young demographics, where over 50% of the population in Cairo, Casablanca, and Lagos is under the age of 35, these cities land squarely in the “AI Enthusiasts” cohort. In fact, Casablanca achieved a top ranking in AI adoption and smart city app usage, outpacing numerous established international metropolises.
The report also finds that cities do not need to begin with or focus solely on world-class infrastructure or deep funding ecosystems to improve resident outcomes. Expanding intelligent AI-enabled city services can strengthen quality of life and overall intelligent city maturity regardless of a city’s starting point, demonstrating that multiple pathways exist to becoming a smarter city – aligned with each city’s current maturity across domains.
The virtuous circle of AI value
The report uncovers a clear alignment between how frequently residents use GenAI tools and how positively they view AI’s future impact. Residents who use AI most often are also the most optimistic about the technology’s potential to improve opportunity, productivity, and quality of life.
This creates a virtuous circle. Positive experiences with AI increase resident confidence, giving city leaders a further opening to enable AI more fully and provide more value to beneficiaries through new and improved intelligent city services. This value feeds yet more optimism, which drives more engagement, innovation, and scaling as the cycle repeats.
Cities in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East are particularly prominent in this pattern, showing the strongest GenAI momentum, pairing high usage with high optimism about its future impact.
Younger, fast-growing urban populations also show especially high enthusiasm, leading disproportionately in usage and satisfaction, indicating that demographics are an important factor in helping to shape the next phase of adoption, as cities cater to current and future generations.
“AI is a key foundation of the intelligent city, and AI adoption and optimism are not confined to the ‘usual suspects’ technology hubs,” says Akram Awad, MD and partner at BCG and co-author of the report. “Cities around the world are creating value for residents in different ways and from different starting points. We built the Intelligent Cities Index to provide an objective, holistic view of how cities shape and enable their AI ambitions and how effectively those ambitions translate into meaningful improvements in people’s lives.”
Unlocking the next phase: Bridging the ‘soft enabler’ divide
To move from “Developing” to higher maturity tiers, the report emphasises that African city leaders must address critical “soft enabler” bottlenecks – specifically venture capital access, tech talent retention, and institutional AI governance. Currently, municipal governments across the continent deploy a limited number of AI use cases.
However, BCG’s analysis shows that cities do not need world-class infrastructure to make progress. By adopting a “focused specialist” approach, African urban centres can partner with local innovation ecosystems to deploy targeted, incremental AI services that address residents’ most immediate daily needs, converting grassroots enthusiasm into long-term economic growth.
Rather than attempting to replicate traditional smart-city development models, African cities can accelerate progress through targeted public-private partnerships and by deploying AI-enabled services through digital channels that residents already use. This approach can help strengthen institutional capabilities while creating a foundation for longer-term intelligent city development.
Different leaders and different pathways to success
While London tops the overall rankings, the five domains are topped as follows:
- London leads in resident outcomes
- Madrid leads in intelligent city strategy
- Dubai leads in adoption
- New York City leads in ways of working
- Amsterdam leads in enablers
Every city in the Index has a different starting point. Several pathways forward are available, with strong outcomes and maturity stemming from either “balanced builders” diversifying strengths across domains or “focused specialists” targeting excellence in specific areas.
The report identifies several characteristics associated with stronger performance:
- AI deployment leads to better resident outcomes. Cities that are embedding AI into core intelligent services are delivering faster, stronger results.
- Smart city app use and satisfaction rise together. This creates another virtuous cycle, with younger cities leading disproportionately in both usage and satisfaction.
- Technology alone is insufficient. The most mature cities in the Index combine both hard enablers such as data, tech, and infrastructure with soft enablers like talent and funding.
- Smart city funding and startup ecosystems drive economic activity. Focus is needed on entrepreneurship and innovation to ultimately fulfill resident expectations.
The authors conclude by detailing a roadmap that lays out the important steps toward stronger outcomes, no matter if a city is leading or lower in maturity. These include establishing clear long-term strategic priorities, strengthening governance and public-private partnerships, scaling proven AI-enabled services, and investing in data and technology platforms, infrastructure, talent, and innovation ecosystems needed to sustain intelligent city progress and transformation.
“Given today’s rapid pace of change and evolving resident expectations, building a city’s intelligent foundation, paired with focused improvement across enablers requires urgency. But city leaders and business partners don’t need to try to do everything all at once,” says Rami Mourtada, a partner and director at BCG and co-author of the report. “It’s a longer-term horizon and there is no single pathway forward. Intelligent city momentum comes from making intentional – and sometimes incremental – choices now and building for a smarter tomorrow with a clear, comprehensive roadmap.”