PwC: Dar is Africa's hub for communication and GDP growth

[BabuK]

Bank of Tanzania (BoT) twins' towers building depicting the beauty of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's commercial capital. PwC says the city is leading in GDP growth and a communication hub in Africa.

Price WaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a world leading blue chip, says Tanzania's commercial capital of Dar es Salaam and Cameroonian capital city of Douala are key African regional platform centres for communication, while Ghana's Accra and Nigeria's Lagos leaders in culture, and Nairobi is the continental hub for financial services.

The PwC new report ‘Into Africa – the Continent's Cities of Opportunity' highlights the potential for the continent' launched at the African CEO Forum in Geneva 2015 on Monday, saying Dar es Salaam is also the continent's leading city in terms of GDP growth, while Kenya's capital, Nairobi outsmarts all African cities in FDI attraction.

The report also says that outside the top five cities, Rwanda's Kigali finishes at the very top for both ease of doing business and health spending, while the Ivorian capita; of Abidjan ranks number one in both middle-class growth and diversity.

The study underscored that with 5 percent growth, dynamic demographics and a growing middle class, Africa is extremely appealing to investors.
"After undergoing a period of pessimism about the future of Africa with some exaggerated optimism, leaders today share a more realistic view of the economic climate of the continent. This is what PwC calls ‘Afro-realism'" the report said.

The trends identified in the report, with the generally accepted economic data supporting the notion that cities are the world's ‘engines of growth', make ‘Into Africa – the Continent's Cities of Opportunity' report not only necessary but extremely timely.

The report went on to say that African continent is crossed by five trends: demographic change, urbanisation, technological changes, the transfer of economic power and climate change.

"Urbanisation is of particular importance, as by 2030, half of Africa's population will live in cities where economic activity and growth will be focused and which will become communication centres and hubs for social trends," it revealed.

The four best cities out of the top five in the report are located in North Africa: Cairo, Tunis, Algiers and Casablanca, with the fifth being Johannesburg.

The preponderance of North African cities at the top is mainly due to how long they have been established. This has given them time to develop infrastructure and a regulatory and legal framework, and to establish a socio-cultural ecosystem.

Johannesburg is the only exception to this pattern since it was only formed more recently, in 1886 (compared to the other cities it's ranked highly with), and was developed rapidly for political reasons. Therefore, its infrastructure and services are comparable to those of the more established African cities, the report said.

Another major criterion of a city's potential is the vision ts stakeholders have for the future. Accra, the capital of Ghana, is a good example of a city that has a good reputation throughout Africa and beyond for the quality of its communications infrastructure, low crime rates and steady democracy. Economically, it ranks second for both its attractiveness as a destination for foreign direct investment and the diversity of its GDP.

PwC Head of Strategy for Southern Africa Stanley Subramoney says: "We have sought to answer ‘what makes an African city one of the opportunity' by developing a set of questions that investors should ask themselves and themes which city politicians and officials can work on to improve their competitiveness".

Subramoney added: "This report assesses how the cities are performing not only on a regional level but also on an international one, which is hugely important in terms of these cities being able to compete and prosper on both of these stages."

PwC studied four indicators: the economy, infrastructure, human capital and population/society (which itself contains 29 variables). From this analysis, two rankings emerged: ‘general' and ‘opportunities for cities'.

"We believe that these cities demonstrate the relative strengths and weaknesses of Africa's urban future. Our evaluation and re-evaluation of that future is, of course, a continual work in progress," insists Kalane Rampai, PwC leader for local government for Southern Africa.

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN