jeff juwana
Moderator
National Mosque - Abuja
According to an index released by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) on 25 African cities, Lagos and Abuja have been listed among the top four cities in Africa with high cost of living.
The key results of cost of living per city by the EIU reveal that Abuja is the second most expensive city with total expenditure score of 107.4, next to Luanda with a score of 131.8, while Lagos comes fourth with 100.8 total expenditure, as Addis Ababa came last with a score of 60.8.
A breakdown of the index shows that Abuja emerged number 12 out of 25 cities, in terms of consumption of alcoholic beverages, tobacco and narcotics, scoring 78.3, while Lagos scored 63.8 to emerge number 21 of the cities that consume same.
In terms of transport, Lagos and Abuja emerged 15 and 22 out of the 25 cities, scoring 107.5 and 91.7, respectively. Top in the list is Abidjan with 172.0 score spent on transportation, while Alexandra in Egypt came last with a score of 71.7.
The economy of the African continent is experiencing a paradigm shift as multinational companies point to Africa as the next region to expand into. Based on a recent business survey conducted by the Economist Group of 217 global companies based in 45 countries, expansion in Africa is a priority for two thirds of them within the next decade..
To the EIU, to expand, companies need Africa city-level data and analysis, as “companies looking to expand into Africa want to concentrate their strategy where growth and demographics are most favourable – in major cities. It is not enough to plan a strategy around nationally-forecasted growth, but rather to have critical forecasting and business information on a particular city.”