Publish at April 30 2025 Updated April 30 2025
Digital technology and its spectacular advances over the last few decades have been the stuff of dreams for individuals and companies alike. Urban environments, among others, have all sought to harness it to solve problems. Whether it's to improve public services, traffic, public transport or many other sectors. It seems that cities are very fond of algorithms and other technologies, all the more so as they benefit from well-equipped infrastructures to offer connectivity to all citizens.
However, this reality is not the same the further we move away from the major centers. Because while most of the population lives in cities, there is still a significant percentage living in remote, more rural areas that feed into the conurbations. Can these communities dream of becoming intelligent too?
We might think that remote regions wouldn't really benefit from technological advances. However, you only have to look at the world of agriculture to see that it has been modernized thanks to drones, soil or animal data, forecasting tools and so on. These advances have led to much more efficient crops and livestock farming that is also more environmentally friendly, reducing the use of pesticides and the overuse of water and soil. Intelligent uses, however, are not confined to the countryside. Many areas of life could be improved by the use of technologies such as telemedicine, which would go some way to solving the problem of medical deserts. Educational establishments and schools could offer additional services to the population thanks to accessible digital platforms, and citizens would have easier access to public bodies.
Of all the territories on the planet, Europe seems to have taken an early interest in the creation of smart villages. As early as 2010, the European Union began analyzing the realities of municipalities in all member states to identify gaps and, above all, develop a plan to change things over the coming years and decades.
The first part was Smart Rural 21; the idea was to classify what was happening in European localities and start promoting smart solutions. From Portugal and Greece to France and Finland, villages began to think about smart village projects. Some programs have even turned to eco-social smart towns, combining technology, community needs and sustainable development.
Around 2020, the European Commission began thinking about the second aspect of smart villages: Smart Rural 27. This second aspect focuses more on a more concrete introduction into certain rural environments. The idea is to do this through the LEADER approach (Liaison entre actions de développement de l'économie rurale), i.e. an approach that is not intended to be vertical (from the EU to the communities) but to start from local needs targeted by public, private and civil administrations and organizations.
In the report published in February 2025, the project notes that it is important for the future not only to be able to offer financial and technical resources, but also to build up internal expertise in order to better develop intelligent solutions in line with needs.
Because, yes, it's not enough to connect a community to the Internet for it to be considered intelligent. The plan involves training people to ensure that applications are consistent with the realities of a community. In fact, as early as the first Smart Rural 21 act, the Commission created a scale for determining the level of intelligence of villages:
While the European model certainly seems to be the most comprehensive, taking many elements into account, we shouldn't think that the rest of the world waited until after the Old Continent to take the plunge. In 2011, with concerns about climate change on the rise, 15 climate-smart villages were set up as pilot projects in South and Southeast Asia, Latin America and East and West Africa. This has enabled farmers, among others, to develop more eco-responsible strategies for making better use of their land while preserving ecosystems.
In the same vein, in 2025, a project was set up in the Sahel countries to help villages react appropriately to the climate. Through various technological means, farmers in this region hard hit by drought and soil degradation will be able to produce food in a more sustainable way over the long term. This initiative will benefit the populations of Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad and Niger.
The latter country has already shown its interest in introducing technology into rural areas with its PVI(Projet Villages Intelligents). As the first phase of the project got underway in 2024, more than 400 communes were now connected to high-speed Internet. In addition, 40,000 Nigeriens were being trained in centers to use digital financial services, enabling them to gain monetary autonomy and encouraging income-generating activities.
In an increasingly digitalized world, it seems a priority to prevent the emergence of a major digital divide. Hence the importance of setting up smart villages that focus not only on installing networks and machines, but also on digital literacy.
Image: Ben Kerckx from Pixabay
References:
Emerllahu, Visar, and David Bogataj. "Smart villages as infrastructure of rural areas: Literature review and research agenda." ScienceDirect. Last updated 2024. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405896324002453.
Kone, Fatimata, and Mathieu Ouedraogo. "Climate-smart villages transforming the Sahel." Alliance Bioversity International - CIAT. Last updated March 20, 2025. https://alliancebioversityciat.org/fr/stories/villages-intelligents-face-climat-transformant-paysage-agricole-sahel.
Naldi, Lucia, Pia Nilsson, Hans Westlund, and Sofia Wixe. "What is smart rural development?" ResearchGate. last updated August 2015. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279634589_What_is_smart_rural_development.
PVI - Smart Villages Project For Rural Growth And Digital Inclusion. Accessed April 26, 2025. https://www.pvi.ne/.
"Smart Eco-social Villages." Rurality-Environment-Development (R.E.D.). Last updated February 17, 2021. https://www.ruraleurope.org/projets/smart-villages/.
Smart Rural Areas in the 21st Century. Accessed April 26, 2025. https://www.smartrural21.eu/.
"Smart Villages." EU CAP Network. Accessed April 26, 2025. https://eu-cap-network.ec.europa.eu/topics/smart-villages_fr.
"Smart Villages, when technology arrives at a village to stay." Iberdola. Accessed April 26, 2025. https://www.iberdrola.com/innovation/smart-village-smart-towns.
"Climate-Smart Villages." CCAFS. CCAFS. Last updated 2021. https://ccafs.cgiar.org/index.php/fr/villages-climato-intelligents.
"Smart Villages." European Commission. Last updated May 26, 2021. https://ec.europa.eu/enrd/enrd-thematic-work/smart-and-competitive-rural-areas/smart-villages_fr.html.
Yahaya, Amsatou. "Rural & digital development: smart villages in Niger." Sofrecom. last updated April 29, 2024. https://www.sofrecom.com/news-insights/developpement-rural-numerique-villages-intelligents-au-niger.html.
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