A new global report has listed Dar es Salaam among the top 10 wealthiest cities in Africa with the biggest number of US-dollar millionaires as the rise of the urban middle class in Tanzania continues to encourage modern retail development.
According to the World Wealth Report 2015 released yesterday by
Knight Frank, the city of Dar es Salaam alone has 36 super-rich
individuals whose net assets are over $30 million (close to 80
billion/-).
Dar es Salaam is ranked 6th in Africa as the city with the highest
number of Ultra-High Net Worth Individuals (UHNWIs) in the continent,
behind Johannesburg, Cairo, Lagos, Cape Town and Nairobi in that order.
Abuja, Addis Ababa, Marrakesh and Kano occupy the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th positions in the continent's wealth ranking.
Tanzanian prime minister Kassim Majaliwa last month confirmed the
scale of economic inequality in the country when he said just 10 per
cent of the population owned the country's entire economy.
The premier's statement came amid growing concerns over the
expanding wealth disparity in the country, whose economy is reported to
have been growing rapidly at around 7 per cent per annum over the past
decade, but the benefits of this growth haven’t trickled down to the
majority of the people.
Elsewhere in Africa, at the end of 2014 there were 169,000
millionaires in the continent - a number expected to rise by 53 per cent
over the next 10 years, according to the report.
The total wealth held by UHNWIs in Africa - those with a net worth
of at least $30 million - was $200 billion. These UHNWIs were expected
to spend more on luxury goods than the previous year as a result, the
report said.
But it's not just the super-wealthy with money to burn. Sections of
Africa's rising middle class are increasingly finding themselves with
greater spending power, although debate continues about how to define
Africa's middle class and whether it matches middle classes elsewhere in
the world.
"The African middle class is growing but their purchasing power is
still relatively low in international terms,” said Fflur Roberts, head
of luxury goods at Euromonitor International.
He noted that leading luxury brands such as Italian menswear
clothing label Ermenegildo Zegna, Hugo Boss (another clothing label) and
Porsche (sports car manufacturers) have been investing heavily and
opening new outlets in the continent over recent years, with others
expected to follow suit.
Meanwhile, according to the World Wealth Report, the number of
millionaires in South Africa plunged 18 per cent over the past year as
the result of a difficult economic environment in the country.
The report estimated that South Africa lost about 950 millionaires
due to emigration last year, with some relocating to the United Kingdom,
Australia, USA, Canada, Mauritius and Israel.
But despite the challenges, South Africa was still tipped by
Euromonitor as "the gateway to the continents luxury market", largely
due to its well-established luxury market, good transport and supplier
links and high quality shopping centers.
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