While none of our cities come close to featuring a building as tall as those in Hong Kong, Dubai, or New York, we have what we have and I am pretty grateful for them.

Also, we can totally claim the tallest building in Africa.

Home to only 54 buildings that are higher than 100 metres, only four of those are higher than 150 metres. There are, however, plans to build several more skyscrapers to add to South Africa’s list.

Currently, the highest is the Carlton Centre in Johannesburg. It hits the 223 metre mark.

However, it won’t be able to keep that title for long as a proposed R6 billion tower in Durban will overtake the Carlton, sitting at 370 metres – but that’s still nothing compared to Dubai’s 829,8 metre tall building (the highest structure in the world.)

BusinessTech does, however, note:

Stretching 269 metres into the Johannesburg city skyline, the Telkom Tower (Hillbrow Tower) is actually the tallest structure in the country, but is listed as a telecommunication tower, not strictly a business or residential building, thus disqualifying it from this list.

Here are the other tallest buildings in South Africa:

2: Ponte Tower, Johannesburg – 172,8 metres

3. Marble Towers, Johannesburg – 152,1 metres

4. Pearl Dawn, Durban – 152 metres

5. The Reserve Bank Building, Pretoria – 148 metres

And Cape Town? Our tallest building is the Portside Building, coming in at 126,4 metres and owned by Old Mutual and FirstRand bank.

Our “tallest building” picture totally wins the prettiest picture award.

[source:businesstech]