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Nigeria’s commercial capital, Lagos and the nation’s political capital, Abuja have remained conspicuously absent on the Expat Insider’s ranking of Best and Worst Places for Expats.
Lagos Shows Up Once In Last Five Years
Since 2014, a global network of expatriates, InterNations has published Expat Insider, one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive surveys on life abroad showing how cities and countries across the world rank under five categories namely; Best & Worst Places for Expats, Quality of Life Index, Ease of Settling In Index, Working Abroad Index and Working Abroad Index.
Under these categories, respondents from these cities are asked specific questions about the cities they live in: What do they think about the local leisure and transportation options in their city? How easy is it for expats to find affordable housing and make new friends? How do they rate their local career opportunities? And how do they rate the state of the local economy?
A review of the surveys for the last five years (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021) shows that Lagos showed up for the first and only time so far on the expat survey in 2019 as it placed last in the bottom 3 below Yangon (80th) and Kuwait City (81st) on the list of most liveable cities. Abuja has so far remained missing on the ranking.
Since inception, the survey has asked more than 12,000 respondents yearly representing more than 173 nationalities who live in 181 countries or territories worldwide.
For the Quality of Urban Living Index, survey respondents evaluated the leisure options and climate, local transportation, safety and politics, as well as health and environment in their city.
Four African Cities Have Remained Prominent
Despite the near absence of Lagos and Abuja on the ranking, four African cities have consistently made a showing on the list over the years.
Cairo, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Nairobi are African cities that have made a showing on the ranking at one time or the other on the ranking in the last five years.
In the 2021 ranking, expatriates in Nairobi ranked the city 12 out of 57 cities surveyed in the world, an improvement from 62 out of 66 in 2020. Nairobi beat other African cities — Cape Town (41), Cairo (52), and Johannesburg (55).
The city was also ranked sixth globally in the finance and housing index based on overall satisfaction with their financial situation, disposable income and affordability and ease of finding houses.
Meanwhile, in 2020, the city of Johannesburg ranked 60th on the bottom 10 list while Nairobi came 62nd.
African Countries Featured
South Africa, Uganda and Nigeria have showed up on the ranking. In 2017, South Africa ranked 42nd ahead of Uganda which ranked 46th while Nigeria showed up at the bottom ranking 62 out of 65 on the Top Expat destinations ranking.
Methodology
Results for the ranking are derived from response of respondents (expatriates) from these cities and a city needs to have at least 50 respondents in order to rank in the index.
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