Inside the ambitious $1 billion cyber city that could make Zanzibar the Singapore of Africa

Florian Fournier, the former Marketing Director at the World’s most valuable company, Apple, and co-founder of the venture creator, OurWorld, has set his sights on building a cyber city (Network State) in the East African island nation of Zanzibar.

• Florian Fournier, co-founder of OurWorld, seeks to establish Dunia Cyber City in Zanzibar, inspired by the concept of a network state detailed in Balaji Srinivasan’s book.
• This cyber city aims to be a Digital Free Zone, providing preferential tax advantages to digital nomads and tech businesses to promote technological development.
• The project is funded through joint ventures with Zanzibar’s government, including real estate sales and local company investments.
• Zanzibar’s president has allocated a 30-year land concession for the project to develop its infrastructure and attract a global community.

Via his venture company, OurWorld, the French CEO is partnering with Zanzibar’s government to establish Dunia Cyber City, a special economic zone located in the Fumba Peninsula of Zanzibar.

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The city is intended to be a haven and enabling environment for tech workers and businesses, one that rivals the Southeast Asian island-city state of Singapore.

“They want it to become for East Africa what Singapore became for South-East Asia,” Fournier said in an interview.

As seen on Bloomberg, there will be between 5,000 and 7,000 residents in the city; however, a large number of other city dwellers won’t actually reside there.

Dunia Cyber City is being designed to function as an e-residence for digital nomads, where individuals navigating various tax regimes would secure a place to claim residence and find alignment in their embrace of “technological sovereignty.”

The French CEO noted that the idea for the cyber city was inspired by a book written by cryptocurrency entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan.

The book touched on the concept of something called a “network state.”

“I was like, wow, that’s exactly what we’re doing,” he said. “That’s when I got in touch with him (Srinivasan).”

Srinivasan subsequently invested in OurWorld’s decentralized computing venture, Fournier disclosed.

The cyber city, which Zanzibari law has designated as the physical portion of a “Digital Free Zone,” will offer comparatively favorable income tax rates, 5% for tax residents who live remotely, 15% for those who live physically, and a complete exemption for businesses for the first ten years of operation, as well as no capital gains or wealth tax.

The government of Zanzibar will receive resident taxes, and the proceeds from city real estate sales will be used to fund local companies.

In November 2024, Zanzibar’s president, Dr. Hussein Ali Mwinyi, gave OurWorld jurisdiction to manage and control the city through a joint venture with ZICTIA, the country’s state-owned telecommunications infrastructure organization.

“I said, ‘What if we bring millions of digital people – not physical – to your island?’” De Spiegeleer, fellow co-founder of OurWorld, stated.

De Spiegeleer expressed an aspiration to build a city with a total commercial value of $1 billion within two years, a figure that surpasses the land’s current value of $70 million by over fifteen times.

The government has granted ThreeFold a 30-year concession to utilize the land, after which an extension of the lease will be necessary to continue operations.

Network State

A network state is a new model of nationhood first articulated by tech entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan in his 2022 book The Network State: How to Start a New Country.

Unlike traditional countries built around territory, a network state begins as a highly aligned online community united by shared values and goals.

This digital collective uses technology, particularly cryptocurrency and online governance tools, to organize, fund itself, and coordinate action across borders.

Over time, members crowdsource physical spaces in different locations, gradually forming a real-world presence.

The long-term ambition is formal recognition as a sovereign entity, making the network state a “cloud-first, land-later” approach to building a country.