The Emerging Middle Class in Africa

Abstract

The Emerging Middle Class in Africa. Edited by Mithuli Ncube and Charles Leyeka Lufumpa. New York: Routledge, 2015. Pp. vii, 215; figures, tables, contributors, acknowledgements. $140.00 cloth, $50.95 paper.Since the turn of the century, Africa has enjoyed impressive levels of economic growth. Increasing numbers of observers have commented that a consequence of this growth has been the emergence of African middle classes. In April 2011, the African Development Bank's chief economist and vice-president Mthuli Ncube, Charles Leyeka Lufumpa, director of the Statistics Department, and Steve Kayizzi-Mugerwa, director of research coauthored "The Middle of the Pyramid: Dynamics of the Middle Class in Africa." This document has served as the foundation for an edited volume, The Emerging Middle Class in Africa (2015). Having assembled an impressive team of international researchers, the book explores the diverse characteristics of Africa's emerging middle class.Mthuli Ncube introduces the edited volume with an operational definition of what constitutes Africa's middle class. Eight thematic chapters and a conclusion follow this introduction. Ncube's introduction lays out the analytic approach that is first presented in the market brief. Like the earlier paper, the book uses an "absolute" definition that includes as members of the middle class those people with per capita daily consumption of $2.00 to $20.00. Ncube then disaggregates the middle classes into first the "floating class" that includes those people who consume between $2.00 and $4.00 a day. Second is the "lower middle class" whose members spend $4.00 to $10.00 a day. Finally, people in the "upper middle class" spend $10.00 to $20.00 a day. Ncube is careful to stress that a "vulnerable" population of 204 million people, or 63 percent of Africa's floating middle class, risk falling back into poverty. Having established the parameters for a definition of what constitutes the middle class, he suggests Africa's middle class reflects "a robust and growing private sector" (p. 3). The book's eight substantive chapters employ the absolute definition to explore how the African middle classes respond to specific issues.In Chapter 1, Charles Leyeka Lufumpa, Maurice Mubila, and Mohamed Safouance Ben Aissa argue that the middle class has enabled African economies to shift away from export-led growth to create dynamic domestic markets. Their essay considers how a large floating middle class is part of changes that might lead to sustainable socioeconomic development. In Chapter 2, Michael Lofchie provides a lengthy analysis of the political economy of Africa's emerging middle class. His essay notes middle class interests in political stability all the while they engage in enterprise development, comply with tax laws, accumulate savings, and make investments in the domestic economy. Lofchie's trenchant analysis describes overarching elements of the middle class and its "hourglass" configuration; how colonial continuities shaped societies, how post-independence economic policies favored failed import-substituting industrialization policies that contributed to chronic political economic weaknesses. …