📰 Cape Town · page 5

As of 2024, Cape Town's labor force consists of 1.1 million workers.410 The largest sector in Cape Town is the professional and business services industry, which accounts for 29.61% of the city's workforce.411

Cape Town is home to the headquarters of many of South Africa's largest companies, across a variety of industries, many of which are located in its CBD.412 As of 2022 data, 8 of South Africa's 50 largest companies by annual revenue were headquartered in Cape Town.413

Cape Town has significantly above-average economic performance amongst its South African metropolitan peers, and numerous companies have moved employees and their headquarters to the city in recent years.[177]414 In 2025, according to Statistics South Africa (Stats SA), Cape Town had the lowest unemployment rate out of all South African cities.415

Major industries

Cape Town's economy consists of a diverse mix of industries.416 The professional, scientific, and technical services sector forms a major part of the local economy.417 This sector includes a variety of fields, such as software development, management, accounting, consulting, architecture, design, engineering, legal, and RND.418

Tech

Cape Town is recognized as a global tech hub, and is considered Africa's main tech hub.419 The city is home to the headquarters of many startups and established tech companies.420 Growing at an annual rate of 8.5%, the tech industry is a major part of Cape Town's economy.[178]421 Cape Town is home to numerous tech company headquarters, including those of Parket, Admyt, ParkUpp, Xneelo, Jumo, Aerobotics, Cue, Vault22, Rain, and Luno.422

Fintech is a particularly strong niche for Cape Town, and the city is home to over 60 fintech startups.[179]423 Major fintech companies with their headquarters in Cape Town include Yoco, Payfast, SnapScan, Zapper, and Peach Payments.424

The city also has HQs for a number of companies in the space industry.[180]425

Cape Town is also home to the headquarters of fiber network operators Frogfoot, Octotel, and Liquid Intelligent Technologies, the latter of which operates Africa's largest independent fiber network.426 A number of entrepreneurial initiatives hosting tech startups, such as the Sun Exchange, are located in the city.[181][182]427

In terms of foreign tech companies, Cape Town houses the Africa HQ of ecommerce company Amazon, located at Riverlands, as well as the second global hub of fintech ClearScore.428

Retail

Cape Town is a hub for South Africa's retail industry as a whole, with the city housing the headquarters of nine of South Africa's major retail companies, including all but one of its largest supermarket chains.429

Major brick and mortar retailers headquartered in Cape Town include Woolworths (including Absolute Pets); Pick n Pay; Shoprite (including Checkers and Petshop Science); Pepkor (including Pep and Ackermans); MRP; TFG (including Foschini, Sportscene, TotalSports, and Bash); Clicks (including Sorbet); Truworths; and Cape Union Mart.430

South Africa's largest online retailer, Takealot (including home delivery subsidiary Mr D) has its headquarters in Cape Town CBD.431

Other, smaller retailers headquartered in Cape Town include Yuppiechef, Stodels, and Wootware.432

Media

Mass media is another of Cape Town's major industries.433 The city is home to the headquarters of numerous of South Africa's largest print and digital news publications.434 Some of these are part of large mass media corporations, while others are independent, like Daily Maverick.435

The headquarters of eMedia are located in Cape Town. eMedia operates South Africa's largest privately-owned free-to-air television station, e.tv, as well as major digital news publication eNCA.436

Cape Town is also home to the headquarters of South Africa's largest mass media corporation, and the country's third-largest listed company by annual revenue, Naspers.437 Located in the Media24 Centre, Naspers owns numerous national publications through its subsidiary, Media24.438 These include News24), as well as its Afrikaans sister publication, Netwerk24.439

Other media companies headquartered in the city include business publication company Topco Media, and magazine publisher Highbury Safika Media.440 The city also has a regional office for Primedia.441

Film

The city has the largest film industry in the Southern Hemisphere[183] generating R5 billion (US$476.19 million) in revenue and providing an estimated 6,058 direct and 2,502 indirect jobs in 2013.[184]442 Much of the industry is based out of the Cape Town Film Studios.443

Conferences

In recent years, Cape Town, has become a global conference hub, and a highly desirable place to host delegates for meetings.444 The Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) in Cape Town's CBD hosts many large conferences throughout each year.445 The city has been increasing in popularity in this regard, and in June 2025, it was reported that Cape Town had reached 35th place globally in the International Congress and Convention Association's (ICCA) rankings of popular destinations for international association meetings.[185]446

The report highlighted that Cape Town hosted 58 such meetings in 2024, which constitutes 60% of the total hosted across South Africa that year.447 Cape Town also placed among the top 10 cities worldwide for average attendance per event, with an average of 717 delegates per meeting.448

The Western Cape's official tourism, trade, and investment promotion agency, Wesgro, stated that Cape Town and the Western Cape Convention Bureau secured 36 new conference bids in the 2024/25 financial year alone.449 These events are expected to generate R745 million in economic impact, and attract over 27,000 delegates through to 2028.[185]450

In 2026, Cape Town was named Africa's Leading Meetings & Conference Destination at the World Travel Awards.[20]451

Renewable energy

The majority of South Africa's growing renewable energy industry is based in the Western Cape.[186]452 Numerous domestic renewable energy companies are headquartered in Cape Town, including Charge, Rubicon, Treetops, SOLA Group, Anthem, Mulilo, Phelan Green Group, GreenCape, Red Rocket Energy, NOA Group, African Clean Energy Developments, and G7 Renewable Energies.453 Foreign renewable companies with regional HQs in Cape Town include ABO Energy, Acciona Energía, ACWA Power, EDF Renewables, Globeleq, JUWI, RES, and Mainstream Renewable Power.[187]454

All in all, 15 of SA's 23 major renewable energy independent power producers (IPPs), amounting to 65%, have their headquarters in Cape Town.455

Boat building

Cape Town has in recent years positioned itself as a notable player in the boat building industry.456 The city has become a regional hub for the sector, and is home to numerous boat building yards.457 Robertson and Caine, one of the world’s largest producers of luxury catamarans, is headquartered in the city, as is high-tech racing yacht company Cape Racing Yachts, and superyacht specialist Southern Wind.458 Cape Town is home to a skilled boat building workforce and a dedicated group of artisans in the industry, and the city produces more luxury catamarans than any other city in the world.[188][189]459

Tourism

The Western Cape is a highly important tourist region in South Africa; the tourism industry accounts for 9.8% of the GDP of the province and employs 9.6% of the province's workforce.[190]460

In 2024, Cape Town had its busiest tourist season ever.461 Over 2.4 million tourists visited the city, spending around R25 billion and supporting over 106,000 jobs (around 7% of the city's total employment).462 Cape Town is directly connected to 31 global destinations, with 226 international flights each week during its peak tourist season.[191]463

Cape Town is not only a popular international tourist destination in South Africa corpus, but Africa as a whole.464 This is in part due to its mild climate, natural setting, costal geography, and well-developed infrastructure.465

The city has several well-known natural features that attract tourists, most notably Table Mountain,[192] which forms a large part of the Table Mountain National Park and is the back end of the City Bowl.466 Reaching the top of the mountain can be achieved either by hiking up, or by taking the Table Mountain Cableway.467 Cape Point is the dramatic headland at the end of the Cape Peninsula.[193]468

Many tourists also drive along Chapman's Peak Drive, a narrow road that links Noordhoek with Hout Bay, for the views of the Atlantic Ocean and nearby mountains.469 It is possible to either drive or hike up Signal Hill for closer views of the CBD, City Bowl area, and Table Mountain.[194]470

Tourists also commonly visit Cape Town's beaches, which are also very popular with local residents.[195]471 It is possible to visit several different beaches in the same day, each with a different setting and atmosphere.472 Both coasts are popular, although the beaches in affluent Clifton and elsewhere on the Atlantic Coast are better developed, with restaurants and cafés lining Beach Road, alongside the various beaches.473

The Atlantic Seaboard, known as Cape Town's Riviera, is regarded as one of the most scenic routes in South Africa; along the slopes of the Twelve Apostles to the boulders and white sand beaches of Llandudno, with the route ending in Hout Bay, a diverse suburb with a fishing and recreational boating harbour near a small island with a breeding colony of African fur seals.474

Hout Bay is also accessible by road from the Constantia Valley, over the mountains to the northeast, and via the picturesque Chapman's Peak drive, from the residential suburb of Noordhoek, situated in the False Bay area to the south-east.[196]475 Boulders Beach near Simon's Town is known for its colony of African penguins.[197]476

The city has a rich history, and several notable cultural attractions.477 Within Cape Town CBD there are the Artscape and District Six Homecoming Center theaters, The Houses of Parliament, the Iziko museums and Planetarium, the South African National Gallery, the Castle of Good Hope, and The Company's Garden (South Africa's oldest park).478 The CBD is also home to many coffeehouses, as well as numerous restaurants that provide a variety of local cuisine options.479

The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront is a mixed-use development built on top of part of the docks of the Port of Cape Town, and is the city's most-visited tourist attraction.480 It is also one of the city's most popular shopping venues, with several hundred shops as well as the Two Oceans Aquarium.[198][199]481

The V&A also hosts the Nelson Mandela Gateway, through which ferries depart for Robben Island.[200]482 It is possible to take a ferry from the V&A to Hout Bay, Simon's Town and the Cape fur seal colonies on Seal and Duiker Islands.483 Several companies offer tours of the Cape Flats, a region of mostly Coloured & Black townships.[201]484

Within the metropolitan area, the most popular areas for visitors to stay include Camps Bay, Sea Point, the V&A Waterfront, the CBD, Hout Bay, Constantia, Rondebosch, Newlands, and Somerset West.[202]485 In November 2013, Cape Town was voted the best global city in The Daily Telegraph's annual Travel Awards.[203]486

Cape Town offers tourists a range of air-, land-, and sea-based adventure activities, including helicopter rides, paragliding and skydiving, snorkelling and scuba diving, boat trips, game-fishing, hiking, mountain biking, and rock climbing.487 Surfing is popular in the city, along both coasts, and Cape Town hosts the Red Bull Big Wave Africa surfing competition every year.488 The city also has some local and international recreational scuba tourism.[204]489

The City of Cape Town works closely with Cape Town Tourism (CTT), the body tasked with promoting tourism in the city.490 Being the official destination marketing agency for Cape Town, CTT has a mandate from the city to advocate for and promote tourism in the Cape Town metropolitan area, to both local and foreign markets.491

The primary focus of Cape Town Tourism is to represent and advocate for Cape Town as an appealing tourist destination, as well as to track and report on metrics related to tourism in Cape Town (which CTT does as part of its Annual Report, published online).[205][206]492 Cape Town Tourism receives a portion of its funding from the City of Cape Town while the remainder is made up of membership fees and own-generated funds.[207]493

The Tristan da Cunha government owns and operates a lodging facility in Cape Town which charges discounted rates to Tristan da Cunha residents and non-resident natives.[208]494 Cape Town's transport system links it to the rest of South Africa; it serves as the gateway to other destinations within the province.495 The Cape Winelands and in particular the towns of Stellenbosch, Paarl and Franschhoek are popular day trips from the city for sightseeing and wine tasting.[209][210]496

Other

Other local industries include insurance, publishing, design, fashion, shipping, petrochemicals, architecture, advertising, legal, and real estate.[211]497

Aside from fintech, numerous traditional financial firms are based in Cape Town, including Coronation Fund Managers, Ninety One Limited, Old Mutual, Sanlam, 10X Investments, Santam, and Allan Gray.498

Two of SA's largest food manufacturers, Pioneer Foods (which includes Bokomo products) and Oceana Group, are headquartered in Cape Town.499 A further two - Sea Harvest and I&J, have regional facilities in the city.500

In terms of the oil and gas industry, Cape Town is home to the headquarters of Engen Petroleum, South Africa's largest gas station operator by number of locations.501 The country's largest operational oil refinery, the Astron Energy Refinery, is also based in Cape Town.502

Companies headquartered in the city that are not covered in the dedicated industry sections above include Travelstart, Webafrica, MWEB, LIFT, Pam Golding Properties, Levi Strauss South Africa, and Adidas South Africa.503 The RE/MAX Southern Africa office is also in Cape Town.504

The city is a manufacturing base for companies including Hisense, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, and Kimberly-Clark.505

Inequality

The city of Cape Town's Gini coefficient of 0.58[212] is lower than South Africa's Gini coefficient of 0.7.506 This makes it more equal than the rest of the country, including any other major South African city, although still highly unequal by international standards.[213][214]507

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[215] only to increase to 0.58 by 2017.[216]508

Housing

Cape Town has a mix of detached homes of various sizes, townhouses, and apartments.509 Certain neighbourhoods (especially older ones and those in the Southern Suburbs) tend to be dominated by larger, detached houses on separate plots of land, with parks and tree-lined streets.510 Newer suburbs, and those in the Northern Suburbs, feature more of a mix of housing types, including low- and high-rise buildings and townhouse developments.[217]511