The number of people living in African cities is expected to double over the next two decades. While the need to provide adequate infrastructure, create high quality jobs and manage pollution in fast growing cities has been well studied, these studies say little about subjective quality of city life. This paper presents findings from the first large-scale quality of life perception survey covering 27 cities in 17 countries in West Africa and the Sahel. Responses from nearly 9000 urban West Africans provide an insight into perceptions of city life, local government quality, and policy priorities with the intention of giving residents a voice in the policy dialogue on the future of African cities. In addition to comparing perceptions across cities, the paper demonstrates the feasibility of an online approach to run large-scale online surveys in West African cities of different sizes and cultural contexts.