US President Joe Biden has announced that he will travel to Luanda in Angola for his first trip to Africa as president, which could also be his last.
Angola has been a lot of things, including producing the second most oil in Africa and helping to mediate in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
But it's not a cheap place to live. It is classified by the UN as a resource-rich, lower-middle-income, food-deficit country with a population of over 35 million.
Its capital, Luanda, was founded in 1576 by Portuguese Paulo Dias de Novais. Today it is the industrial, economic, political, administrative and religious centre of the country. Residents have to pay top dollar to live better.
Top hotels in Luanda charge between $250 and $485 per night, while high-end restaurants charge between $18 and $35 per meal.
Francisco Chivela, an economist in Luanda, told The EastAfrican that the cost is partly because everything is concentrated in Luanda. This means there is less for more people from all over the country. The solution, he argued, is to decentralise services, including the country having more than one capital.
Angola has 18 provinces and 164 municipalities, but from next year it will have 21 provinces and 325 municipalities after parliament passed a law in August creating new political-administrative regions.
The province of Moxico has been split into Moxico and Kassai Zambeze, the province of Cuando Cubango has been split into Cuando and Cubango, while the province of Luanda has been split into Icolo and Bengo. It is the most populous province in the country, home to at least a third of the Angolan population.
According to experts, the city was originally designed for around 500,000 people.
The current population is estimated at 9.6 million. In 1950, Luanda had 138,413 inhabitants. It has grown at an average rate of 3.86 percent per year.
In 2020, the African Cities Research Consortium group ranked Luanda as the fourth largest city in Africa in terms of population, ahead of Cairo, Lagos and Kinshasa.
Dar es Salaam is the fifth, Addis Ababa the tenth and Nairobi the eleventh largest city on the continent, while Brazzaville is ranked 34th.
According to a UN report, more than half of Angola's rural population lives on less than $2.15 a day, and rapid population growth is increasing the number of people living in poverty.
This seems to be most noticeable in Luanda.
Etic Journal, which owns ETIC Hotels, a hotel booking platform, ranks Luanda as the most expensive city in the world for expatriates.
According to the online publication, several factors contribute to the high cost of living, including the fact that many goods are imported, Luanda's infrastructure is still recovering from years of civil war, and the oil-driven economic boom has led to inflated prices for housing and services.
Another factor contributing to the high cost of living in Angola's capital, the publication explains, is the sudden influx of expatriates, especially those working in the oil and diamond industries, which has increased demand for international goods and quality housing.
Mr Chivela explains other reasons for Luanda's high cost of living.
He says bureaucracy in the banking system makes the cost of living in Luanda high.
“In other cities around the world, electronic payment is popular. Here in Luanda it is a rarity. You can even make purchases on the street with your phone in some cities, but here in Luanda it is still a dream,” Mr Chivela said.
In August, consulting firm Mercer ranked Luanda as the world's most expensive city for expatriates in a survey that analysed the cost of living in more than 200 cities, taking into account factors such as food, housing, medical care, clothing, transport, location, leisure and entertainment, among others.
In a list populated by European and Asian counterparts, the Angolan capital topped cities such as Hong Kong, Tokyo, Zurich, Singapore, Seoul, Geneva, Shanghai, New York City and Bern.
This is not the first time that Luanda has topped the list of the most expensive cities in which to live as an expatriate. In 2017, it was ranked first, ahead of Hong Kong.
In 2015, Luanda was named the world's most expensive city for expatriates for the third year in a row, due to the high cost of rent, imported goods and security.
João Saraiva, a Portuguese national who has run a hotel business in Luanda for the past two decades, recalls an incident that still haunts him, when a Ghanaian football player was charged $10 for a haircut in 2010, when Angola hosted the Africa Cup of Nations tournament, and the player reported the matter to the police.
“There are cities where money has a lot of value, but here in Luanda it seems that money loses its worth every day,” Mr Saraiva said.
“Luanda is overcrowded compared to other cities in the country and the world.”
To make matters worse, there is a high level of informality, Mr Saraiva added, which means that people in Luanda generally live from hand to mouth and cannot develop the sectors that depend on a culture of borrowing and saving.
Currency depreciation and a rise in petrol prices have fuelled inflationary pressures since mid-2023, a World Bank bulletin said, adding that Angola's economy is not creating enough jobs to keep up with the growing working-age population.
Data from the African Development Bank Group shows that most jobs in Angola are informal (79.9 percent) and the unemployment rate is high (29.6 percent), driven by rural areas (38 percent) and youth (52.9 percent).
