From Ghost Towns to Green Dreams: Inside Zanzibar’s Bold Urban Experiment | Sebastian Dietzold

There’s a silent pandemic sweeping across Africa: ghost towns. Gleaming housing estates built for the elite, sold off-plan at record speed, only to stand lifeless and hollow. No lights. No children. No community. Just profit wrapped in concrete.

And then there’s Fumba Town, a living, breathing counterargument to everything we’ve been told development should look like.

In this episode of “Inside East Africa”, Rajan Nazran engages with Sebastian Dietzold, the man quietly attempting to pull off the impossible: urban development that is simultaneously sustainable, inclusive, and profitable. If that sounds like fantasy, buckle up, because his team is already doing it.

Born in Tanzania and trained in Europe’s corporate machine, Sebastian could have played the safe real estate game. Instead, he returned to Zanzibar, looked at the tidal wave of urbanisation sweeping across Africa, the fastest in human history, and saw not a crisis, but an opportunity to reset the rules.

Because what good is development if people can’t live in it? What good is “green innovation” if sustainability ends at a press release?

While most developers chase luxury buyers, Sebastian and his company, CPS, built Fumba Town on the principle of balance. In one neighbourhood, families paying $100 a month live next to those paying $3,000. No walls. No segregation. Their kids play in the same streets. Equality not as a slogan, but as architecture.

While others talk “green”, Sebastian swapped concrete dependency for engineered timber, designed homes that collect and reuse stormwater, and built an entire nursery of indigenous plants simply because “nature knows better than us.” He even factored vertical rivers, violent sky-bursts of rain accelerating due to climate change, into building design. Who else is talking about future-proofing African housing against the weather of 2040?

And while many projects crumble under bureaucracy, Fumba thrives because it sits in Zanzibar’s unique semi-autonomous system, a loophole most never thought to use. They secured a 99-year lease, built a free-zone city, and turned it into a full-scale living lab for sustainable African urbanization.

So why isn’t the rest of the world paying attention?

This conversation is not about “another development project.” It’s about redefining African urban identity. It’s about proving that sustainability doesn’t have to price people out, that community is as important as infrastructure, that Africa doesn’t need imported models; it can export new ones.

If you believe Africa deserves better than concrete shells and broken promises — listen to this episode. Share it. Send it to a policymaker. Forward it to a real estate investor. Challenge someone you know to think bigger.

This isn’t just another development story. It’s a blueprint for how Africa can build differently. Permanently. Together.

*Disclaimer: The perspectives expressed by the guest are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of our platform. This discussion is intended solely for knowledge-sharing and should not be interpreted as endorsement.

Produced by Global Indian Series for the Global Indian Network.

Script by Rajan Nazran
original idea: Rajan Nazran

Introduction music: (https://freesound.org/people/Timbre)