Elijah Ntongai, an editor at TUKO.co.ke, has over four years of financial, business, and technology research and reporting experience, providing insights into Kenyan, African, and global trends.

Africa’s population has been growing at an unprecedented rate over the past several decades, making it the fastest-growing continent in the world.

High fertility rates combined with improvements in child survival have resulted in a youthful demographic profile. Concurrently, urbanisation in Africa is accelerating as this highly educated young population seeks better economic, social, and cultural opportunities that are typically clustered in cities.

Cities like Lagos, Nairobi, and Accra have become magnets for recent graduates and skilled workers looking for jobs in sectors such as finance, technology, and creative industries.

This rapid urban population influx has not only strained city infrastructures but has also led to an increasing demand for housing, which has raised rental costs significantly in recent years.

Numbeo is a crowdsourced online database of perceived consumer prices, real property prices, and quality of life metrics. The database ranks cities and countries across the world based on a calculated index of the average costs of various elements of the cost of living.

Numbeo provides a rent index of the countries in Africa and the rest of the world. Rent Index is an estimation of prices of renting apartments compared to NYC, which is often considered the most expensive city in the world. For example, if the rent index for a country is 80, Numbeo estimates the price of rents in that city is, on average, 20% less than the rent price in New York City.

Notably, all African countries have a rent index below 30, which means that on average, the rent prices in African cities are less than 70% of the rent costs in New York City.

Kenya has an estimated rent index of 8.2, while Uganda and Tanzania have 8.1 and 8.7, respectively. Below is a list of the most expensive countries to rent houses in Africa according to the Numbeo data as of mid-2025.

In other news, the 2024 Post Office Worldwide Holiday Costs Barometer revealed that prices for meals, drinks, and common tourist items have fallen in over 60% of the 40 destinations surveyed.

Portugal’s Algarve was the only European destination to crack the top five most affordable spots.

Vietnam’s Hoi An, South Africa’s Cape Town, and Kenya’s Mombasa lead the list of cheapest cities, and European luxury hubs like Croatia’s Poreč, Italy’s Rome, and France’s Nice, alongside tropical locales such as Mauritius’s Grand Baie and Barbados’s Bridgetown, dominate the roster of most expensive destinations.

Source: TUKO.co.ke