Kenya Among Top Most Expensive Countries to Live in Africa

Living and the aspect surviving all depends on managing expenses and the overall cost of living in a country. It is a huge toll to live in a country with a high cost of living and although you can always move to a different state, it isn’t exactly as easy as it seems.

In July 2018, GoBankRates compiled a list of 50 cheapest countries to live in the world and Kenya was in position 43. The countries were compared to New York, USA, but is Kenya really the cheapest?

Of the 50 countries listed, 9 of them were African countries, and in ascending order, the cheapest country to live in is Tunisia, followed by Zambia, then Egypt, Algeria, South Africa, Morocco, Uganda, Kenya, and lastly Nigeria.

The measurements were each weighed against prices found in New York City. The metrics of affordability were based on the local purchasing power index, the rent index, the groceries index, the restaurant price index and the consumer price index.

According to GoBankRates, the cost of living in Kenya is 61 percent cheaper than New York City and rents are 91 percent lower.

According to another site, Numbeo.com, the cost of living in Kenya is 45.38 percent lower than in the United States – aggregate data for all cities with rent not taken into account. Rent in Kenya is 74.90 percent lower than in United States (average data for all cities).

According to the site, it is cheaper to live in Kenya than Ghana, Mauritius, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Ethiopia, Zambia, and Tanzania. The cost of living index in the country is 38.72 compared to Ghana, which had the highest among the listed countries with 59.79.

On the other hand, it is cheaper to live in Morocco, Nigeria, Uganda, Algeria, Tunisia, and Egypt. With a cost of living index of 25.69, Egypt is the cheapest country to live in Africa.

The rent index, cost of living plus rent index, the groceries index, restaurant index, and the local purchasing power index in Kenya is 8.67, 24.23, 36.57, 31.61, and 32.06 respectively.

The image below shows the indexes for the same in the rest of the 14 African countries.

Source: www.numbeo.com

Expatistan.com – the cost of living calculator that allows you to compare the cost of living between cities around the world – compared the cost of living in 14 African countries.

Nairobi, with a price index of 100 is the third most expensive city in Africa to live in after Pretoria and Johannesburg, both in South Africa. The list is as shown below.

To calculate each city’s Price Index value, Expatistan assigned a value of 100 to a central reference city, in this case, Prague, then after establishing the reference point, the Price Index value of every other city in the database was calculated by comparing their cost of living to the cost of living in Prague.

That is to say, if a city has a Price Index of 134, that means that living there is 34 percent more expensive than living in Prague.