Business
Africa’s emerging middle class continues to fuel growth
Africa’s growing middle class has boosted demand for consumer goods.
Though rarely mentioned in the western media, an emerging middle class in Africa, is driving economic growth and gives crucial support to democracy and political stability on the continent.
Africa’s middle class is strongest in countries that have robust and growing private sectors. “Countries in East and Southern Africa that sustain a viable middle class and that hold governments accountable include countries like Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia. Mozambique’s middle class is small but growing in size and importance,” said Vijaya Ramachandran, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and author of Africa’s Private Sector.
“There is very little about Africa’s middle class that has been written since the 1960s. And there is very little in the way of statistics,” said Martha Saavedra, associate director of the Center for African Studies, at UC Berkeley. “Accounts in the news media just portray the mass of poverty in Africa, clearly there is more to Africa, and a big part of that is the middle class.”
One of the noticeable things across Africa is how many people have cell phones: 71 percent of adults in Nigeria, for example, 62 percent in Botswana, and more than half the population in Ghana and Kenya, according to a 2011 Gallup poll.
