Cape Town is transforming itself from a city admired for its beauty into one respected for its substance. Voted "Best City in the World" by Time Out magazine earlier this year, the city is no longer simply a destination, it’s a hub of possibility, innovation, and strategic potential.
In late March, while tabling the city’s budget, Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis announced a South African-record infrastructure investment of R39.7bn over three years. This is a clear signal that Cape Town’s ascent didn’t happen by chance. It’s the result of deliberate investment in talent, infrastructure, and culture - creating an ecosystem where natural and human capital thrive side by side.
Rather than be caught up in futile inter-city competition, the more strategic questions to ask are: What can other cities learn from Cape Town’s success?
How can other regions develop strategies that play to their own strengths?
Can we, as a country, learn from the meteoric rise of Cape Town into a global hub, where influencers want to film themselves, digital nomads choose to stay, businesspeople want to invest, and entrepreneurs want to launch startups?
With this in mind, I asked Mayor Hill-Lewis if he’d share the strategic vision behind the city’s impressive run. The idea is to demystify Cape Town’s global status and provide some inspiration, and important lessons, for other cities and the country at large.
He agreed, and so here are the answers to some important questions:
Yes, our starting point was to ask what was not working in South Africa, and to determine what we could do at a city level to get those things working, or at the very least build a resilience to those things here. Our strategy was to try to expand the ambit of things that cities could do by either winning further devolution of powers, or by pushing the boundaries of how existing powers were defined.
The idea was to very visibly create an alternative to counter the decline South Africa was feeling and experiencing. This was important for obvious, practical reasons, like getting the economy to grow faster to create more jobs and get more people out of poverty.
It was also important for the national psyche - South Africans were becoming inured to the idea that decline was all we knew and all we would know. But this is a profoundly negative and bleak thing to accept. By refusing to accept that, and saying “here is a place that is showing the opposite,” it sends a message to all South Africans about how our country can be turned around too.
The most important tenet is infrastructure. This is the basic job of all cities everywhere, unless they are investing in the basic infrastructure that makes cities work, then the city is in fact slowly dying. It may not be visible at first, but infrastructural decay spreads like a slow-moving cancer, and eventually the decay is obvious, and much, much harder to reverse.
Then, we knew Cape Town needed to be an easier place to do business, so we set about building a programme to systematically cut red tape and make it an easier place to do business. In fact, we set a bold ambition to be the easiest place to do business in Africa.
As you can see, these interventions don’t benefit any one sector or business. They do the most good for the widest number of businesses possible. This summarises our approach - horizontal, not vertical.
Of course, there are a few sector-specific interventions, like in tourism. Tourism is an extraordinary opportunity for South Africa, especially because it is quite labour intensive and so creates a lot of jobs, and those jobs don’t require very high skills. This is perfect for our unemployment problem. So Cape Town does actively work on marketing the city overseas and growing our tourism numbers, because this is a powerful way to add growth and jobs.
We’ve broken all South African records for infrastructure investment and we are the only part of South Africa that has returned to pre-Covid tourism numbers.
We’re making good progress on ease of doing business, having developed our own ease-of-doing-business progress tracker index which we now publish annually. And more generally, I think we are steadily building our reputation as the part of South Africa where the government is working best. It’s not that we don’t have problems, we do, of course. But we are working positively to overcome them.
Ask: What is standing in the way of success? And what can you do about those things from where you are? Tackle those things head on.
I’m very positive about Cape Town’s future. I think we are strongly positioned to continue our current run of success long into the future. And this is not just sentiment. We can know this is true because of the long-term investments we are making now.
A stable government creates the environment for growth and progress. We’ve had an outright majority in Cape Town for almost 15 years and with a stable government, we have been able to make consistent progress in building a city which is focused on preparing for the future, through leveraging its natural beauty and skills. This enables Cape Town to compete on a global level and receive accolades like "Best City in the World", as named by Time Out.
Unpacking the lessons: It is clear that the answers to another city’s challenges won’t necessarily lie in replicating Cape Town’s success line item by line item. What is clear, though, is that the right questions need to be asked, and then answered with conviction.
Cape Town, despite its immense and visible successes, still navigates complex problems. Its journey is far from over. Safety and security must be front and centre if it is to sustain its dream run.
Deep poverty and homelessness remain pervasive in many areas. These are the types of challenges that require systemic change, but if the story of Cape Town teaches us anything, it’s that systemic shifts start with the conviction to ask tough questions: What are our glaring weaknesses? What’s holding us back? What are our strengths? What are our competitive advantages?
Then, in answering these questions, success is earned through the courage to define a clear vision, and a roadmap that attracts, retains and inspires multiple stakeholders to walk the same journey.
A rising tide must raise all ships: Cape Town’s global rise is real, but its true test also lies not just in the accolades or investment figures, but in how broadly and deeply it uplifts all its people. Growth that benefits only the privileged is not progress. We must embrace the philosophy that a rising tide raises all ships, but only if we intentionally unmoor the “ships” still stuck in the silt of poverty.
Disproportionate benefits arising from a city’s success should be intentionally and meaningfully channelled into sustainable, systemic solutions to poverty. That means infrastructure that serves the many, not the few. Job creation that is inclusive. Public spaces that restore dignity. And policies that offer more than platitudes, but real pathways to prosperity.
A tale of two swimming pools: When you look at Nelson Mandela Bay, where I originally come from, the contrast becomes painfully visible. Their main public swimming pool, St George’s, once a beloved community asset, stands empty and in total disrepair. It’s more than a neglected facility, it’s a metaphor for a city that has increasingly lost its sense of purpose and possibility.
And yet, I recently saw something remarkable: in Gugulethu, one of Cape Town’s historically marginalised communities, I recently saw you, and others, swimming in a magnificent, immaculate, crystal-clear public pool. Clean. Safe. Welcoming. Accessible. Some might dismiss this as a small or symbolic thing, or even accuse it of being gaslighting. I disagree.
Symbolism matters. Access matters. Dignity matters. When people are given access to world-class facilities, it doesn’t just deliver a service, it delivers a vision of what can be. It says: You matter. You deserve this. You belong in a city of excellence.
Cape Town’s tech boom: A Silicon Valley of the South? It’s also impossible to ignore the exponential growth in Cape Town’s tech ecosystem. Beneath the digital nomad appeal lies a deeper truth: the tech boom and investment in the city is accelerating fast. As I’ve observed, from a number of meetings, one gets the sense that Cape Town could become the Silicon Valley alternative, offering not only an incredible lifestyle, but also the perfect crucible for opportunity, talent, infrastructure, and innovation. This is fertile ground for the incubation of world-changing businesses and ideas.
The energy is palpable. And it’s not just aspirational - it’s investable.
In 2025, Cape Town reminds us of what global cities can aspire to be: not just centres of commerce, but beacons of possibility. The lesson for South Africa is clear: with clarity of vision, bold leadership, inclusive investment, and an unwavering belief in what can be - transformation isn’t just possible. It’s already happening.
