The price is not right

Most people equate Africa with low costs of living. In Angola they would be wrong. Three bags of meager groceries set us back over $100 and since then we have had to shop wisely and prudently. In fact grocery shopping is a rite of passage for expatriates here. One Venezuelan friend recounted how when the supermarket cashier asked her for $1000 on her first shopping trip and she argued that there must have been a mistake, before embarrassingly reducing her trolley to the bare essentials.

A bottle of Nivea body cream from the supermarket came in at about $25, a pineapple in the street at about $5 and meals out in admittedly chic restaurants are enough to induce cold sweats. The capital, Luanda is particularly pricey and was ranked the most-expensive city in the world for expatriates this year. A modest two to three bedroom apartment in the centre will set you back at least $5,000 per month, one year’s rental must normally be paid in advance and yet the flats are full. In the same way, flights to Luanda are equally extortionate, but rarely are there seats to spare.

I asked a friend why Angola was so expensive and he replied that it was due to a combination of its war past, a significantly high proportion of high earning expatriates pushing up prices, and the fact that few products are manufactured within Angola but are imported from abroad. Other oil rich countries such as Nigeria and Iraq are not so pricey however. I am no economic expert but the figures do not add up.

Although neither my boyfriend nor I are oil tycoons, we can survive. However I do wonder how the 68 percent of the population living below the poverty line of $1.70 per day, and the 28 percent of those in extreme poverty on less than $0.70 per day can.

Some foreigners are here to make big bucks, some are here to try to help Angola develop itself, many come here for work that they could not find in the West and others just for the challenge of living in a developing country.

A typically optimistic Angolan friend said to me, ‘look on the bright side, with the cost of living this high, at least you have a clear conscious that you are not here to make money’. Whilst we may have to reduce the frequency we eat out from before in Brussels, I know we will not go hungry. And even if pineapples are a tad pricey, my friend’s remarks do at least provide some consolation.