Luanda – After the end of Angola’s long civil war in 2002, the capital Luanda became an unlikely African version of Dubai, as oil money poured in and a clutch of skyscrapers sprang up along the coast.
But many new office blocks now stand empty or unfinished as the country suffers the painful aftermath of a boom that came crashing down with the fall in oil prices two years ago.
Last month, after the local kwanza currency plunged in value, Luanda lost its top spot as the world’s most expensive city for expats as rated by Mercer’s annual survey.
The city still sits at number two, just below Hong Kong, thanks to the pumped-up price of everything from imported bottled water and restaurant seafood to renting modern apartments.
At the upmarket Candando supermarket in Talatona district, customers like Katia Carreta say the economy’s rollercoaster ride has left even wealthier families uncertain of whether they have a future in the country.
“Prices are far too high for the current level of wages,” Carreta, 46, an Angolan whose husband works for a construction company, told AFP as she pushed her trolley out of the store.
“Things simply cost too much for the lifestyle that we were hoping to have,” said the mother of four.
Candando – slogan: “Everything will be better” – is a large, chic supermarket with brightly-lit aisles, fresh food displays, a coffee shop and prices to match. But its target audience is under strain.
Even after the fall of the kwanza, six eggs cost the equivalent of $3.50, as does a packet of imported cheese, while a large bag of rice or three salmon steaks cost $30.
Slums and skyscrapers
Away from newly-developed Talatona, many of Luanda’s residents still live in slums, with tin shacks spreading to the horizon.
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Mandela Day: Gates Foundation To Invest $5B In Africa In Five Years
Bill Gates, the richest man in the world and philanthropist, pledged to invest an extra $5 billion in helping youth in Africa particularly those affected by health epidemics like malaria, AIDS, Ebola and Zika virus.
The Microsoft co-founder was delivering the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in Johannesburg, South Africa, on Sunday a day before Mandela Day. He is also in the country to attend an AIDS conference that will start on Monday.
Every year, the Nelson Mandela Foundation organizes a lecture series, which offers prominent leaders a platform to address thorny social issues. other leaders that have previously talked at the lecture include former US president Bill Clinton, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Michelle Bachelet, the first female president of Chile.
Gates said the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has already invested over $9 billion in Africa in the last 15 years, mostly in health related projects, according to Economic Times.
He said Africa’s youth should be given a chance to grow and get a better education as this was fundamental to the continent’s overall development.
“The youth must be given an opportunity to thrive. We must clear away the obstacles that keep young people from growing,” he said, adding that Africa has the world’s youngest demographics.
“By 2050, 40 percent of the world’s children will live on this continent,” Gates said.
Despite perennial political instability, widespread diseases and other issues affecting Africa, the billionaire philanthropist thinks that there is hope in the continent’s youth and said they are key in determining the direction for the future.
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Serviced apartments in Africa
At the time of the last GSAIR there were 8,802 serviced apartments in 102 locations in Africa. Today there are 9,477 in 166 locations, a rise of 7.6% and 62.7% respectively in just 18 months. This shows the rising level of interest in the sector, although supply is still limited across the African continent, with a particular shortage of quality serviced apartment accommodation. Where there is supply, the range of amenities and service available to guests often extends purely to daily cleaning.
However there are hot spots, such as Cairo (Egypt), Marrakesh (Morocco), Accra (Ghana), Dar As Salaam Tanzania), Abuja (Nigeria) and Nairobi (Kenya). Business travellers to Nairobi make up 26% of all arrivals; business travel and
conference delegates accounts for 31% in Accra.
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Overtaking Egypt, Closing In On Nigeria: Can South Africa Regain No. 1 Spot African Economy?
South Africa has regained its position as Africa’s second-largest economy after Nigeria, edging out Egypt, Bloomberg reported. Can it regain top economy in Africa?
The gap between the economies of South Africa and Nigeria has been closing despite the fact South Africa’s economy shrank as the rand weakened, according to Bloomberg.
Nigeria, meanwhile, continues to hold the top spot in terms of the continent’s economies even after its currency, the naira, was devalued by 30 percent.
Top economy in Africa?
In May, auditing and advisory firm KPMG said Egypt had overtaken South Africa as the continent’s second-largest economy, according to the latest figures released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in its World Economic Outlook report, released in April.
The new IMF statistics showed that South Africa’s slowing economic growth, together with the depreciation of its currency, the rand, had led to a decline in the U.S. dollar value of the economy from 2012 to 2015. The country’s currency depreciated by as much as 50 percent, resulting in an average decline of the nominal U.S. dollar value of South Africa’s GDP of almost 7 percent per year between 2012 and 2015.
Although the Egyptian pound has also been devaluing, it has been doing so at a much slower pace than the South African rand, particularly due to the Central Bank of Egypt’s tight control over the pound since 2011, when unrest gripped the country.
The IMFpredicted that South Africa’s economy would see a growth rate of only 0.6 percent in 2016 and 1.7 in 2017, and that Egypt’s economy would grow by 3.3 and 4.3 percent in 2016 and 2017, respectively.
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Angola hits troubled times after heady post-war boom
Luanda – After the end of Angola’s long civil war in 2002, the capital Luanda became an unlikely African version of Dubai, as oil money poured in and a clutch of skyscrapers sprang up along the coast.
But many new office blocks now stand empty or unfinished as the country suffers the painful aftermath of a boom that came crashing down with the fall in oil prices two years ago.
Last month, after the local kwanza currency plunged in value, Luanda lost its top spot as the world’s most expensive city for expats as rated by Mercer’s annual survey.
The city still sits at number two, just below Hong Kong, thanks to the pumped-up price of everything from imported bottled water and restaurant seafood to renting modern apartments.
“Prices are far too high for the current level of wages,” Carreta, 46, an Angolan whose husband works for a construction company, told AFP as she pushed her trolley out of the store.
“Things simply cost too much for the lifestyle that we were hoping to have,” said the mother of four.
Candando – slogan: “Everything will be better” – is a large, chic supermarket with brightly-lit aisles, fresh food displays, a coffee shop and prices to match. But its target audience is under strain.
Even after the fall of the kwanza, six eggs cost the equivalent of $3.50, as does a packet of imported cheese, while a large bag of rice or three salmon steaks cost $30.
Slums and skyscrapers
Away from newly-developed Talatona, many of Luanda’s residents still live in slums, with tin shacks spreading to the horizon.
source