The City of Cape Town has been named as the place with the best community spirit in all of Africa, followed by Johannesburg. This is according to new data that revealed which cities around the world offer residents the most opportunities to find new community groups.
This data was compiled by Remitly, a digital financial services provider for immigrants and their families. The company used Meetup data to discover which towns and cities in Africa and around the world have the highest number of Meetup groups available per person.
Cape Town tops the list for Africa, ahead of Johannesburg and Pretoria, with 0.3 Meetup groups available per 10 000 residents and a vast range of options, from dog lover communities to meditation groups.
Cape Town took the lead in the rankings, boasting 153 Meetup groups.
Jago McKenzie, business management director at Remitly, commented: “Alongside finding the right place to work and live, establishing a community of friends who share similar interests is one of the most important aspects of moving to a new city.
“A strong sense of community can increase your sense of belonging and purpose and prevent any feelings of isolation and loneliness that can be common when moving somewhere new.”
Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis has also welcomed the city, ranking 2nd in the “50 Best Cities in the World to Visit in 2024” survey by Time Out in an extensive survey of 20 000 global travellers alongside their network of travel writers and editors.
Time Out noted that Cape Town had been ranked by every single respondent as a beautiful city to visit, contributing to the city ranking second behind New York.
“Tourism to Cape Town is now at all-time record levels, which will only be boosted even more by our world-beating ranking in the ‘50 Best Cities in the World to Visit 2024’ global survey.
“This is good news because record tourism brings new jobs to our city of Cape Town, and that is always our primary goal.
“It takes a big Team Cape Town effort to offer tourists a world-class experience.
“Our city is clearly impressing visitors, who uniformly highlighted the beauty of our destination in response to this global poll,” said Hill-Lewis.
He said the city is making the right investments now to ensure Cape Town is an even better place to visit in the future.
“That includes a record infrastructure investment pipeline, advanced plans for water and energy security, and growing our policing resources to keep Cape Town safer,” said Hill-Lewis.