A new book on the emerging middle class in Africa, edited by Senior Research Fellow Mthuli Ncube, has been receiving considerable press attention as it highlights the potential for Africa’s economic growth and development.
More than one in three Africans (370 million of the continent’s 1.1 billion people) are described as members of the middle class, acting as an important driver of Africa’s economic growth and marking out a milestone in Africa’s contemporary economic history. The growth, though uneven, is a source of hope for Africa, but also a signal to the rest of the world on the prospects for economic recovery and renewal, particularly because it has been steady despite the global downturn.
“There is a stable middle class and it is growing,” said Mthuli Ncube, who was formerly the African Development Bank’s chief economist.
“It is a big driver for investment in Africa,” he added at a news conference in Johannesburg, where he launched the book.
The Emerging Middle Class in Africa, (published by Routledge, October 2014) analyses specific aspects of the lives of the middle class in Africa. It looks at how people become and remain in the middle class through a series of thematic chapters. It examines how behaviour changes in the process, in terms of consumption patterns and spending on health and education. And it describes clearly how important education and health are in helping poor households move into higher income brackets.
A further dimension of this analysis is how class impacts on gender relations and whether women are able to reap the same benefits of social advancement available to men. Africa is a continent of such scale and diversity that experiences across countries vary widely. The book thus captures the common patterns across the continent.
This text is primarily aimed at Africanist researchers, policy makers, development practitioners, and bilateral and multilateral institutions, as well as students of African studies, political science, political economy, development studies, and development economics.
Read press coverage related to the launch of this publication.
