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Living in Windhoek even more cheaper for expats as compared to other African countries

Living in Windhoek even more cheaper for expats as compared to other African countries

Windhoek has been ranked the third least expensive city in Africa for expatriates to live in, according to Mercer’s 2021 Cost of Living City survey.

Namibia’s capital city dropped from ranking at 208 out of 400 Cities in 2020 to 204 as at March 2021.

In Africa, N’Djamena (Chad) has ranked as the most expensive city in Africa for expatriates with Lusaka (Zambia), the least expensive, followed by Tunis (Tunisia) and then Windhoek (Namibia).

The rankings provide an important insight for multinationals on the cost of recruiting or relocating an expatriate in Africa, and also help human resources leaders to structure a remuneration package to attract the right skills for an assignment.

This is because a more expensive destination for expatriates makes it a costly to multinationals since the cost of sending an employee on an assignment increases.

Importantly, Stevens Kawoubouga, Senior Associate at Mercer, said given the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on African economies, organisations could use the cost of living rankings to consider implementing regional pay structures to enable talents to move more efficiently across borders by mitigating some of the key challenges when it comes to cost of living, pay competitiveness and purchasing parity.

“Furthermore, more organisations are introducing virtual assignments, where an employee performs the same job remotely as they would do if they were to relocate to the host location. For example, a professional based in Ghana would be able to perform tasks and be responsible for operations in Kenya. Alternatively, organisations could start hiring more local foreign talents to fill in the gaps in their talent acquisition programmes,” he said.


 

About The Author

Donald Matthys

Donald Matthys has been part of the media fraternity since 2015. He has been working at the Namibia Economist for the past three years mainly covering business, tourism and agriculture. Donald occasionally refers to himself as a theatre maker and has staged two theatre plays so far. Follow him on twitter at @zuleitmatthys