Marrakech (Morocco), Johannesburg (South Africa) and Alexandria (Egypt) are at the top of a list devoted to the quality of life in the 100 main African cities, published Tuesday by the magazine Afrique Méditerranée Business (AMB).
“In Africa, until now, rankings were made for investors or expats. At no time did we ask ourselves the question of the people who live there, young or old, rich or poor, ”urban planner Jérôme Chenal, director of the research unit of the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne, told AFP ( EPFL) who carried out this groundbreaking study.
To establish the quality of life of African city dwellers, the researchers collected over a year a series of indicators to assess the performance of cities in various areas such as housing, infrastructure, public transport or economic development.
One hundred African metropolises – all the capitals but also the most populous cities – were thus scrutinized.
Unsurprisingly, the major cities of North and South Africa – regions with the continent’s most developed economies – top the list.
Three Moroccan cities in particular (Marrakech, Casablanca and Rabat) rank among the top eight, as does Tunis (6th). These metropolises thus give the pawn to the famous South African city of Cape Town (9th), better endowed with infrastructure but served by its insecurity and social inequalities.
Algiers is classified in 11th position.
Libreville (20th) and Dakar (23rd) are also doing well, the second benefiting in particular from the dynamism of its mayor, Khalifa Sall.
In 39th place, the economic capital of Côte d’Ivoire, Abidjan, is beginning to recover from the political crisis the country has been going through. “But the current renewal is not yet visible in the statistics,” said Jérôme Chenal.
Cities presented as economic engines of the continent such as Nairobi (Kenya), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Lagos (Nigeria) or Kigali (Rwanda) are not particularly well ranked.
The most populous city in Africa with 12 million inhabitants (intra-muros), Lagos (43rd) suffers from its poor results in terms of environment and governance and Kigali (54th) from authoritarian management in the area. of habitat.
Finally at the bottom of the ranking are cities destabilized by conflicts, social or security tensions, such as Bamako, Kinshasa, Pointe-Noire or Bangui.
This ranking will be updated and published each year with the ambition for EPFL researchers to bring out “real urban data”, less disparate than current indicators, on cities on the African continent.
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