NOT long ago the idea of taking a city break in Africa was laughable, says Richard Assheton, British newpaper The Times West Africa corresondent.
Among other problems, your sleeping options were limited to swanky business hotels — with their swept marble floors, stiff rates and complete lack of anything resembling character — and hotels of a more local bent.
That has changed.
Africa is now Airbnb’s fastest-growing market, according to data from the aggregator AirDNA, which tots up bookings on the home-sharing website combined with those on its rival Vrbo.
The continent remains far behind the rest of the world, its 234,000 listings represent a drop in the global ocean of 7 million.
But 1.2 million Airbnb nights were booked in Africa last month. The digital sensation that revolutionised travel has finally arrived in the continent, making a new era of African tourism that has as much to do with coffee and museums as lions, look suddenly possible, according to Assheton.
Since the year before the pandemic, 2019, booked nights in the world’s second-largest continent have risen by almost a third — nothing special. But in the past year they have increased by about 70 per cent.
That is obviously recovery from the pandemic, but it far outstrips growth in other continents — the global average increase in the last year is 31 per cent.
In cities across Africa, many of which are just six or seven hours from London, you can now peruse thousands of Airbnb options, including plenty with dozens of glowing reviews.
And the boom coincides with many of these cities becoming places you could conceivably spend a breezy few days, unimperilled by terrorism or boredom.
Dakar, Senegal’s capital and the hub of Francophone west Africa, somehow manages simultaneously to bustle and recline, with its surfing beaches, wander-friendly markets and museums including the spaceship-like Museum of Black Civilisations opened in 2018. You can go into a bistro with checkerboard tiles and red-checked tablecloths and be pointed to a table by a frumpy madame for a croissant, or a plate of poulet yassa, a chicken stew.
‘Friends who went recently had very good things to say about their Airbnb, Loman Art House, run by a South African-born Australian artist,’ says Assheton.
The biggest Airbnb markets in sub-Saharan Africa are Cape Town, Nairobi, Johannesburg and Lagos.
‘Cape Town’s pleasures are well-known; Nairobi has a national park on its doorstep, the violence that blighted it seems for now to be behind it, and one Airbnb host there tells me his guests are 50 per cent tourists, mostly from the US and Europe; Johannesburg has petty crime but also history museums aplenty, café culture and the best live music in South Africa; and Lagos, where I live and which is Africa’s fastest-growing city for Airbnb, with booked nights jumping sixfold since 2019, is far better than you might think,’ he says.
‘Lagos compared to 20 years ago, jeez,’ says Trevor Ward, the British owner of W Hospitality Group, which advises hotels across Africa from an office in Nigeria’s megacity. ‘We used to go out to eat and there was a Chinese or a Lebanese. That’s it. Today I could point you to five restaurants that sell that special beef from Japan which I can never remember the name of.’
There are beaches, concert venues and all-night clubs playing Afrobeats and perhaps most impressively of all, art galleries opening all the time, including, recently, the satellite of a London one, Tiwani Contemporary, as west African art does unprecedented numbers at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. The notorious traffic can still cause trouble but is better, partly because of the pandemic. The crime, while not to be scoffed at, is manageable.
Mark Slade, the British owner with his wife, Millie, of Jara Beach Resort outside Lagos, says: ‘I’ve called Lagos home for over ten years and not once have I met a visiting tourist who didn’t love it.’
One diplomat thinks the city should market itself as a party paradise for long weekends. Slade says the biggest block to ‘an influx of curious travellers’ is not insecurity but Nigeria’s substantial visa fees, which can cost about $250.
As for Airbnb, I stayed in one before I found my flat run by Coco Jiang, a Chinese woman who moved to Nigeria for business three years ago.
She much prefers hosting non-Nigerians than locals, largely because they are familiar with the culture of Airbnb. Nigerians are spending the equivalent of a hotel rate to stay, so expect hotel standards of service. One, she said, came home with a different woman every night.
‘They don’t have facilities for the middle class’ in Nigeria, she says, which Airbnb can provide.
The African tourist industry accounted for 7 per cent of the continent’s GDP in 2019, but was battered by Covid, losing an estimated $55bn in revenue in the first three months of the pandemic, according to the African Union.
It is gradually recovering, and there are signs governments and businesses are optimistic. The World Economic Forum says Africa’s lack of air infrastructure greatly hampers tourism, but dozens of new airports are under construction, while last year Boeing forecasted that African airlines would need to buy more than 1,000 new planes by 2040 to satisfy demand.
Velma Corcoran, Airbnb’s regional lead for the Middle East and Africa, said that Africa was ‘one of the most diverse and incredible places in the world’ and the service offers visitors options ‘beyond the regular tourist hotspots.’ She added that Airbnb had made hosting easier, allowing Africans to boost their income.
Any visitor will still have to be smart, and do their research. Ward, understandably given his work, says he would still be wary of an African Airbnb. ‘It’s a total lack of trust in what you’re going to get.’
But no longer does an extended city break in Dakar or Nairobi, if not quite a weekend in Ouagadougou, sound so ridiculous.