World's Most Expensive City? Luanda in Angola !!

How to visit Angola

Patience, the essential virtue

If you want to do business, keep your temper

Jan 28th 2010 | LUANDA | From The Economist print edition

THOUGH Angola wants to woo foreign investors, everything seems contrived to deter all but the most intrepid and patient. Getting a visa, for a start, can take many months. Finding somewhere to stay in Luanda, a capital city built for 500,000 that is now home to 5m, is not much easier. A single hotel room, if you can find one, will set you back $500-600 a night. A bed in a simple guesthouse costs at least half that. Even then, you are liable to be chucked out if a guest with a deeper pocket turns up.

Luanda has earned the dubious title of the world's most expensive city for the second year running, according to a study by ECA International, a consultancy. A rented two-bedroomed flat at $7,000 a month is considered fairly cheap; to buy the freehold could cost a good $2m.

Food is as high-priced. A take-away hamburger costs $13, a glass of fruit juice $5, a pair of rubber flip-flops $34. Annual fees for a day pupil at the international school in Talatona, a brand-new suburb 20km (12 miles) south of Luanda's city centre, are $23,000 for a founding expatriate parent—and $38,000 for late-comers.

Just getting around the city is gruelling. There are no taxis or public transport of any sort, bar the ubiquitous, clapped-out, jam-packed minibus taxis. So visitors have to rent a car and driver—for up to $500 a day. Driving your own car may seem sensible but streets constantly change as the city is torn down and rebuilt; signs barely exist.

Besides, you cannot avoid Luanda's mammoth traffic jams. It can take more than two hours to drive a couple of miles along the Marginal, the city's palm-lined coastal road. You have to get to the airport four or five hours in advance to check in for a flight, for fear of losing your seat; the opening of a new airport may ease the queues.

So you need three qualities: a smattering of Portuguese, since outside the ex-patriate community, few speak anything else; wads of cash, preferably dollars, since credit cards are rarely accepted, even in posh hotels; and an inexhaustible supply of patience.