Cape Town CITY PROFILING REPORT 2025

The 2025 City Profiling Report for Cape Town describes a city with strong institutional governance and high service delivery standards relative to other SADC cities, yet one plagued by deep structural inequality and chronic traffic congestion. While the city maintains a clean audit record and high human development indices, it faces significant challenges in youth unemployment, informal settlement growth, and climate vulnerability, particularly regarding water scarcity and fire risk.

• Cape Town is South Africa's most congested city, a result of its bowl-shaped topography and apartheid-era spatial planning that forced residents of the Cape Flats to commute 20–40 km via a few narrow corridors.
• The city's governance is ranked as the highest among South Africa's eight metro municipalities in the 2024 Governance Performance Index, scoring 4.5, with its strongest performance in service delivery.
• Cape Town has maintained a clean audit outcome from the Auditor-General of South Africa for six consecutive years as of 2023-24, making it the only metro municipality to do so.
• Despite a high Human Development Index of 0.76 in 2022, the city exhibits significant inequality with a Gini coefficient of 0.61.
• Youth unemployment is a critical issue, with 45.2% of people aged 15–24 unemployed in 2025, although this is lower than the national rate of 62.4%.
• The city is diversifying its water sources to mitigate drought risks, aiming for 25% of its supply to come from groundwater, water reuse, and desalination by 2040.
• Energy-related greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 6.5% between 2012 and 2018, with per capita emissions falling from 5.98 tCO2e to 4.92 tCO2e.
• The passenger rail network has seen a massive decline, losing 92% of passenger trips since the 2013/14 financial year due to theft, vandalism, and mismanagement.
• Cape Town's air quality is relatively high compared to regional peers, with a PM 2.5 concentration of 8 µg/m³, which is below the WHO recommended limit of 15 µg/m³.
• The city's operating expenditure is dominated by trading services—electricity, water, sanitation, and solid waste management—which account for 57% of total spending.

APA

Mongae, D. M. (2025). Cape Town CITY PROFILING REPORT 2025. Good Governance Africa. https://digitalmallblobstorage.blob.core.windows.net/wp-content/2025/12/Cape-Town-African-Cities-Report-2025.pdf

Chicago

Mongae, Dr Mmabatho. Cape Town CITY PROFILING REPORT 2025. Good Governance Africa, 2025. https://digitalmallblobstorage.blob.core.windows.net/wp-content/2025/12/Cape-Town-African-Cities-Report-2025.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Mongae |first1=Dr Mmabatho |title=Cape Town CITY PROFILING REPORT 2025 |publisher=Good Governance Africa |date=2025 |url=https://digitalmallblobstorage.blob.core.windows.net/wp-content/2025/12/Cape-Town-African-Cities-Report-2025.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{mongae2025cape, author = {Mongae, Dr Mmabatho}, title = {{Cape Town CITY PROFILING REPORT 2025}}, institution = {Good Governance Africa}, year = {2025}, url = {https://digitalmallblobstorage.blob.core.windows.net/wp-content/2025/12/Cape-Town-African-Cities-Report-2025.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }