Opinion
Africa: Explaining the rapidly expanding middle class
African middle class family in Lusaka, Zambia. PHOTO/Georgina Smith/The Guardian
By Fred Ojambo
Africa’s middle class is growing at a faster rate than that of its population.
Experts have attributed the growth of the middle class to increased investments in the service sector, the unlocking of the continent’s vast natural resources and sound economic policies countries have been pursuing in the past two decades.
“The liberalization of African economies has resulted in improved efficiencies and led to a rapid growth in the service sector, which has spurred the growth of the middle class,” said Lawrence Bategeka, a principal researcher at the Uganda based Economic Policy Research Center.
According to an African Development Bank report titled The Middle of the Pyramid, by 2010, the continent’s middle class, had risen to an estimated 34 percent of its population or nearly 350 million people — up from about 126 million or 27 percent in 1980.
“This represents a growth rate of 3.1 percent, compared with 2.6 percent in the continent’s overall population over the same period,” the report states.
Africa’s middle class, characterised by a per capita daily consumption of US$2-US$20, is widely acknowledged to be the continent’s future in terms of economic and political development.
But it is difficult to determine exactly who falls into this key group and even harder still to accurately establish how many middle-class people there are in Africa, according to African Development Bank.
