Where to live in Eswatini
We track 3 cities in Eswatini: Lobamba, Manzini and Mbabane. Average temperatures run from 17°C to 20°C. We estimate a couple needs €1,955 to €2,146 a month to live centrally. For foreigners, long-term residency is hard to obtain.
12 questions, about 4 minutes, no account needed. Taking the quiz is free, and so is seeing your #1 city. Full results for both of you are a one-time US$12 (€12 in Europe).
- Safety
- 46/100
- country-level estimate
- Healthcare
- 50/100
- country-level estimate
- Democracy
- 3.0/10
- estimated
Estimated from World Bank indicators and calibrated to the scales of our reference tables: safety from the country-level homicide rate per 100,000 people (VC.IHR.PSRC.P5, 2021) and Worldwide Governance Indicators Political Stability and Absence of Violence estimate (GOV_WGI_PV.EST, 2025), healthcare from the life expectancy at birth (SP.DYN.LE00.IN, 2024) and current health spending per person in US dollars (SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD, 2023), cost of living from the price level of GDP relative to the United States, from GDP per person in US dollars and at purchasing power parity (NY.GDP.PCAP.CD/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD, 2025) and democracy score from the Worldwide Governance Indicators Voice and Accountability estimate (GOV_WGI_VA.EST, 2025). Source: The World Bank (World Development Indicators, Worldwide Governance Indicators), CC BY 4.0.
Limited data for Eswatini. Figures for safety, healthcare, cost of living and political stability in Eswatini are country-level estimates from World Bank indicators, each named with its year. We have no tax, English, social openness or internet speed figures for Eswatini, so the quiz scores those factors conservatively and this page leaves them out.
The 3 cities we track
Source: City size from GeoNames, temperature from the Open-Meteo archive (2019 to 2023 averages), rainfall from TerraClimate (1991 to 2020 normals), coast distance from Natural Earth. Cost is our model estimate for a couple living centrally, from the World Bank price level.
Residency and visas
Hard to obtain. Long-term residency runs essentially through an employer-sponsored work permit or a business-person permit for someone actively running a local enterprise; there is no retirement, passive-income, or golden-visa route.
For short visits, 93 of 198 passports can enter visa-free and 105 need a visa in advance.
Source: OurNextCity residency dataset, hand-reviewed approximations researched against published immigration rules. Not legal advice: check the official source before you apply. Short-stay entry from the passport-index dataset (ilyankou, MIT).