Accra has this year taken the top spot on the MasterCard African Cities Growth Index (ACGI) for the second consecutive time as the city with the highest potential for inclusive growth, sources said Tuesday.Casablanca (Morocco) and Freetown (Sierra Leone) are ranked second and third in the large city category, both with medium-high inclusive growth potential.

A statement issued by MasterCard and distributed by the African Media Agency (AMA), said Tunis (Tunisia) is the top ranked medium city, followed by Libreville (Gabon) and Nouakchott (Mauritania), all three with medium-high inclusive growth potential.

Launched in 2013, the ACGI maps the continent’s economic outlook according to the inclusive urbanisation of its cities.

Sets of lagging (historical) and leading (forward-looking) indicators were used to rank the cities’ level of inclusive urbanisation, forecasting potential for inclusive growth, the statement said.

The statement further revealed that 74 analysed cities were organised into three categories by population size: large (over one million),medium (between 500,000 and one million) and small (under 500,000).

Once ranked, the cities fell into one of four bands describing their inclusive growth potential – high, medium-high, medium-low or low.

The ACGI under its Africa and Middle East President Michael Miebach affirms the importance of advancing and protecting individual freedoms to ensure ongoing economic development.

MasterCard is a global payments and technology company that connects billions of consumers, thousands of financial institutions, millions of merchants, governments and businesses worldwide.

For more than four decades, MasterCard has been a driving force at the heart of commerce, making the global economy safer, more efficient, more inclusive and more transparent for all.