Gaborone 5th most livable African city

It may come as no surprise to most, but here it is in black and white; Botswana has been declared one of the top 10 livable African cities.

How Africa.dom measured the ‘livability’ of each city

Africa.dom, which put the report together, admitted that while lists that measure something like “livability,” are can somewhat be of a subjective quality, they relied on both quantitative and qualitative data to determine which cities would make this list.

Africa.com also resolved only to consider cities in continental Africa. For example, without making a human judgment, Port Louis of Mauritius would have appeared on the list, and in fact, has appeared on other lists of the most liveable cities in Africa. The website said while it admires Port Louis, it thinks that it is not fair to compare the capital city of what is largely a resort island to the major metropolitan cities on the continent, so the analysis excluded island cities.

Thirdly, the analysis aggregated data primarily from African sources, so as to remove a Western bias. For example, it used the Ibrahim Index as a primary source in evaluating safety and security, rather than similar reports from Western governments in an effort to see Africa through the eyes of Africans.

Fourth, the criteria used included four variables; the availability of goods and services, quality of infrastructure, and overall security (which is defined both in personal terms and in national political terms).

Fifth, in addition to collecting quantitative data on the criteria above, Africa.com used its extensive network on the continent for qualitative input as a “reality check” to the results that the data yielded. These “reality checks” resulted in some small, but important adjustments to the list.

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