Luanda is World’s 2nd Most Expensive City

Luanda the capital city of Angola is the most expensive place to live in Africa and the second in the world after Tokyo in Japan.

The Worldwide Cost of Living Survey 2012 conducted by human resource consulting firm Mercer Group shows that Luanda, last year’s global “winner” is the most expensive city in the continent and second in the world.

According to the survey, three of African cities are among the world’s 20 most expensive places for expatriates to live in.

Djamena city of Chad is listed as the second most expensive and Libreville city of Congo is the third most expensive.

The survey, gathers information used by governments and major companies to protect the purchasing power of their employees when transferred abroad,
Tunis capital of Tunisia ranks at position 209 of the 214 cities covered by the study across five continents is the least expensive African city for expatriates.

“It might be surprising to see 20 African cities in the top third of the ranking.
The main driver behind this is the difficulty in finding good secure accommodation for expatriates. So the limited supply of acceptable accommodation is very expensive,” says Constantin-Métral, the group’s spokesperson.

According to her, the cost of imported international goods is also very high in these cities, considerably contributing to the high cost of living.

The fourth most expensive city is Khartoum up 18 places from last year and ranked 26 on the global list. Ndjamena, Chad (8), follows, dropping five places since 2011.

Dropping eight places, Libreville, Gabon (20), is the next followed by Niamey, Niger.

On the list after Niamey are Lagos in Nigeria, Bamako, Mali, Abidjan,Cote Devoir, Brazzaville, Congo, Djibouti, Djibouti and Dakar, Senegal.