Food is a basic necessity for survival and a fundamental component of our daily lives. However, for many people around the world, the cost of food can be a significant burden on their finances. Expensive food prices in countries can profoundly impact people’s ability to afford nutritious and healthy meals, which can ultimately affect their health and well-being.
Food is a basic necessity for survival and a fundamental component of our daily lives. However, for many people around the world, the cost of food can be a significant burden on their finances. Expensive food prices in countries can profoundly impact people’s ability to afford nutritious and healthy meals, which can ultimately affect their health and well-being.
Numbeo, one of the world’s most profound data and research platforms, twice a year, computes data that determines the countries with the highest cost of living globally. Some of the indexes used to create the list includes the cost of feeding, particularly prices of groceries, and restaurants in the country.
Numbeo relies on user inputs and manually collected data from authoritative sources (websites of supermarkets, taxi company websites, governmental institutions, newspaper articles, other surveys, etc.) to get its indexes.
The manually collected data from established sources are then entered into the platform’s database twice a year. A more comprehensive breakdown of the methodology is available on Numbeo’s website.
Below is the list of the top 10 African countries where it is most expensive to eat. The food price index is based on Business Insider’s weighted average of Numbeo’s groceries index and restaurant index.
Rank | Countries | Food price index | Groceries index | Restaurant index |
---|---|---|---|---|
1. | Senegal | 40.7 | 38.1 | 43.3 |
2. | Mauritius | 37.0 | 41.6 | 32.3 |
3 | Namibia | 35.0 | 30.9 | 39.1 |
4 | Zimbabwe | 33.6 | 35.0 | 32.5 |
5 | South Africa | 32.5 | 30.1 | 34.8 |
6. | Botswana | 31.6 | 30.5 | 32.7 |
7 | Ivory Coast | 31.4 | 35.2 | 27.5 |
8 | Kenya | 28.4 | 29.8 | 27.0 |
9 | Cameroon | 28.1 | 33.8 | 22.3 |
10. | Nigeria | 27.3 | 32.4 | 22.2 |