HARARE – It may be known as the ‘Sunshine City’, but Harare is one of the gloomiest places to live on earth, according to a new survey.
Only five cities rank worse than Zimbabwe’s capital as the “least liveable cities of 2018” – Damascus in Syria, Dhaka in Bangladesh, Lagos in Nigeria, the Pakistan capital Karachi and Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea.
The annual worldwide survey compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) ranks 140 cities on a range of factors, including political and social stability, crime, education and access to healthcare.
According to the survey, the Austrian capital, Vienna, is the “most liveable” city on the planet. Australian, Canadian and Japanese cities dominate the top 10.
Australian cities Melbourne (2), Sydney (5) and Adelaide (10); Canadian cities Calgary (4), Vancouver (6) and Toronto (8) and Osaka (3) and Tokyo (7) in Japan dominate the top 10 of the “most liveable cities” of 2018. Danish capital Copenhagen weighs in at number nine.
Six of the least liveable cities are African – Lagos (3), Harare (6), Tripoli, Libya (7), Douala, Cameroon (8), Algiers, Algeria (9) and Dakar, Senegal (10).
The EIU said that crime, civil unrest, terrorism or war played a “strong role” in the ten-lowest scoring cities.
Harare, with an estimated population of 1.5 million people, was the scene of a military coup that toppled former President Robert Mugabe in November last year. His successor, Emmerson Mnangagwa, is accused of authorising the deployment of soldiers to crush opposition protests on August 1. Rights groups say at least seven people were shot dead, and dozens others injured in the incident that followed disputed elections.
