Electronics payments company MasterCard says Ghana’s capital Accra has again topped an African cities list with the highest potential for inclusive growth.

MasterCard on Monday released its index titled "MasterCard African Cities Growth Index (ACGI)", which named the West African capital as the city with the highest growth potential for the second year in a row.

Launched last year, MasterCard's index assesses and ranks African cities according to their level of inclusive urbanisation and growth potential on the continent.

MasterCard has said the ACGI maps the continent's economic outlook according to the inclusive urbanisation of its cities.

And unlike last year, when the company only researched 19 African cities to determine its findings, this year 74 cities have been analysed.

Cities have been organised into three categories by population size namely large (over million), medium (between 500,000 and one million) and small (under 500,000).

Professor George Angelopulo, of the University of South Africa and co-author of the ACGI, said, “For the second year, Accra ranked well across the assessment criteria and received one of the highest governance scores.”

He said, “The city is not Africa’s most populous or richest in terms of per capita GDP, but has made progress towards conditions that are conducive to inclusive urbanisation.”

Angelopulo noted that the West African nation; though, faces macroeconomic challenges.

Among challenges include Ghana’s high current account deficit.

In 2013 Ghana’s GDP growth also slowed down to 5.5% and is expected to remain more subdued in 2014, according to the World Bank.

“Inclusive growth occurs when the benefits of an expanding economy are widely shared with the population,” said Dr Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, co-author and chief economist at the MasterCard Centre for Inclusive Growth.

“We believe that inclusive urbanisation is a prerequisite for inclusive growth, and so the ACGI is a lens through which African cities can be assessed as future investment destinations,” he added.

Other African cities noted are Morocco’s Casablanca and Freetown in Sierra Leone, taking second and third spot respectively. However, the two cities are identified as having medium to high potential growth.