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When it comes to opportunity in Africa, things may not be so rosy as compared with cities from the developed nations, but Cape Town was named the best city for opportunity in Africa by the auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
Cape Town was labelled the top city for opportunity in Africa by PwC, being ranked 24th out of 31 cities included in the global study. It came out sixth out of the middle income cities category, behind Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Moscow, Shanghai and Mexico City.
Cape Town's mayor Patricia de Lille expressed her delight at this development, saying that she was encouraged to see that Cape Town is recognised as Africa’s opportunity city, but in order for the city to stay globally competitive they need to take the city to the next level and create opportunities for all.
Apart from categorizing travel and work possibilities, the Global Cities Opportunity Report 2018 looks at factors like how can a city can provide a balance between economic and physical security, nurturing aspiration, quality of life and the over all environment.
A key intervention was for the city to decisively address apartheid spatial planning that kept the majority of residents away from opportunities to jobs, good education, and healthcare. Some of the variables considered by the study in coming up with the best cities for opportunity include intellectual capital and innovation, technological readiness, transportation and infrastructure, health, safety and security, sustainability and natural environment, demographics and livability, ease of doing business and cost and economic clout.
The report found that employment in the metro grew 4.8 percent year-on-year. Cape Town was also the metro with the lowest expanded unemployment rate at 22.6 percent, far below the national rate of 37.2 percent, De Lille said.
But for Cape Town, opportunities are still not yet accessible for all. Some are still excluded from all this good news. PricewaterhouseCoopers, through their Africa's head of cities and urbanisation Jon Williams, acknowledged Cape Town's predicament when they said, "Cape Town is at a crossroads between African problems and global ambitions. Its future success will depend on its ability to solve longstanding problems at home while keeping up with a rapidly changing world. These longstanding problems included access to opportunities for the majority of residents."
PwC’s Senior Manager for Cities and Urbanisation Dominic Boyle said,"Although Cape town ranks top in technology readiness in Africa, it lags behind other cities on a global scale. For example, Amsterdam alone host 900 Tech events a year and leading cities are continuously looking for ways to improve connectivity – although Cape Town is making progress in these areas, it falls short when benchmarked against other cities globally."
Cape Town still has a lot of work to do, but for the current successes made, they can revel in that and use it as a stepping stone to improve, and create opportunities for everyone so that no one is left behind.
Header image credit: EWN
