Cape Town, Western Cape Province, South Africa

🇿🇦 Cape Town is the second most populous city in South Africa and is colloquially named the Mother City. It is the largest city of the Western Cape province and forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality.

The Parliament of South Africa is situated in Cape Town.

The city is known for its harbour, for its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region, and for landmarks such as Table Mountain and Cape Point.

The city was named the World Design Capital for 2014 by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design.

Economy Top publicly traded companies

in the Cape Town/Stellenbosch

region for 2021

(ranked by market capitalisation)

1 Naspers; 2 Capitec; 3 Sanlam; 4 Shoprite; 5 Pepkor; 6 Clicks; 7 Woolworths; 8 Remgro.

Cape Town is the economic hub of the Western Cape province, accounting for roughly 80% of the province's GDP. The city is South Africa's second main economic centre and Africa's third main economic hub city. It serves as the regional manufacturing centre in the Western Cape. In 2011 the city's GMP was US$56.8 billion with a GDP per capita of US$15,721. In 2014, the City contributed 9.8% of the national GDP.

In the five years preceding 2014 Cape Town GMP grew at an average of 3.7% a year. As a proportion of GMP, the agriculture and manufacturing sectors have declined whilst finance, business services, transport, and logistics have grown, reflecting the local economy's growth in specialised services sectors. Fishing, clothing and textiles, wood product manufacturing, electronics, furniture, hospitality, finance and business services are industries in which Cape Town's economy has the largest comparative advantage.

The city of Cape Town's Gini coefficient of 0.58 is lower than South Africa's Gini coefficient of 0.7 making it more equal than the rest of the country. Between 2001 and 2010 the city's Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality, improved by dropping from 0.59 in 2007 to 0.57 in 2010 only to increase to 0.58 by 2017. The city has the lowest rate of inequality in South Africa although still highly unequal by international standards.

Most goods are handled through the Port of Cape Town or Cape Town International Airport. Most major shipbuilding companies have offices in Cape Town. The province is also a centre of energy development for the country, with the existing Koeberg nuclear power station providing energy for the Western Cape's needs.

Cape Town has four major commercial nodes, with Cape Town Central Business District containing the majority of job opportunities and office space. Century City, the Bellville/Tygervalley strip and Claremont commercial nodes are well established and contain many offices and corporate headquarters.

Most companies headquartered in the city are insurance companies, retail groups, publishers, design houses, fashion designers, shipping companies, petrochemical companies, architects and advertising agencies. Some of the most notable companies headquartered in the city are food and fashion retailer Woolworths, supermarket chain Pick n Pay Stores and Shoprite, New Clicks Holdings Limited, fashion retailer Foschini Group, internet service provider MWEB, Mediclinic International, eTV, multinational mass media giant Naspers, and financial services giant Sanlam. Other notable companies include Belron (vehicle glass repair and replacement group operating worldwide), CapeRay (develops, manufactures and supplies medical imaging equipment for the diagnosis of breast cancer), Ceres Fruit Juices (produces fruit juice and other fruit based products), Coronation Fund Managers (third-party fund management company), ICS (was one of the largest meat processing and distribution companies in the world), Vida e Caffè (chain of coffee retailers), Capitec Bank (commercial bank in the Republic of South Africa). The city is a manufacturing base for several multinational companies including, Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline, Levi Strauss & Co., Adidas, Bokomo Foods, Yoco and Nampak. Amazon Web Services maintains one of its largest facilities in the world in Cape Town with the city serving as the Africa headquarters for its parent company Amazon.

With the highest number of successful Technology companies in Africa, Cape Town is an important centre for the industry on the continent. This includes an increasing number of companies in the space industry. Growing at an annual rate of 8.5% and an estimated worth of R77 billion in 2010, nationwide the high tech industry in Cape Town is becoming increasingly important to the city's economy.

The city was recently named as the most entrepreneurial city in South Africa, with the percentage of Capetonians pursuing business opportunities almost three times higher than the national average. Those aged between 18 and 64 were 190% more likely to pursue new business, whilst in Johannesburg, the same demographic group was only 60% more likely than the national average to pursue a new business. With a number of entrepreneurship initiatives and universities hosting technology startups such as Jumo, Yoco, Aerobotics, Luno and The Sun Exchange.