Nairobi, Johannesburg, and Lagos emerge as Africa’s most visited cities.

Johannesburg, Lagos and Nairobi have emerged the most popular destinations in Africa with over 5 million expected visitors in 2013, according to MasterCard’s Third Annual Global Destination Cities Index.
The recently released index ranks Johannesburg as the highest on the continent both in total number of visits and international visitors totalling 2,544,013 and generating the sum of $2.7 billion, while Lagos will have 2,164,897 visitors which will generate about $922 million, the report showed.
Eleven other African cities were including Cape Town (South Africa), Durban (South Africa), Nairobi (Kenya), Cairo (Egypt), Casablanca (Morocco), Accra (Ghana), Beira (Mozambique) , Kampala
(Uganda) , Maputo (Mozambique) , Tunis (Tunisia)  and Dakar (Senegal), were rated on the Index.
In 2012, the total number of visitors to Nairobi was 1.8 million, with a total spend of who about $1.5 billion.
The top three cities from which visitors to Johannesburg originate are London (299,000 people), Frankfurt (187,000 people), and Dubai (157,000 people).
Philip Panaino of the Division President of MasterCard South Africa, says that: “Four of the top five outbound destinations for Johannesburg travellers are within Africa. Maputo and Harare top the list; London comes in third, followed by Lagos and Windhoek.”

Lagos, which is referred to as an emerging city, has witnessed considerable growth in the past year following a fall in visits in 2010 and 2011. In 2010 and 2011, Lagos suffered a severe contraction, with visitor numbers declining by about 20 per cent each year, before recovering to around 6.9 per cent growth in 2012.
The MasterCard Index of Global Destination Cities is reached using the criteria of the number of total international visitor arrivals and the cross-border spending by visitors in the destination cities.

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