Duncan Clarke debunks the "rising African middle class" meme in Business Daily:
Images of the "rising middle class" mesmerise the corporate world and distort economic visions of the future. Some seek hope for growth in latecomer mobile telephony technology diffusion across Africa — an idea mooted for "transforming the continent" — which is akin to the "economics of wishful thinking" and a distraction from fundamental matters: unlocking natural capital and enhancing productive wealth accumulation. Such "analysts" place the commercial cart ahead of the economic horse.Continuing
There will be a larger middle-class future in Africa, but one emerging from today’s only modest base. Consumerism has attracted more to the cities and lifestyles of the rich and famous, with the celebrity culture as strong in Africa as anywhere else.More here
The managerial models of understanding Africa from "commercial think-tanks" (one advocates dreaming of the "African Phoenix"), make serious play of this consumer-driven image of the continent "on the move", even suggesting it as a recipe for its future economic strategy.
Yet this is nothing like the required economic advancement built around an actual or dominant "middle-class" milieu as commonly and quite wrongly suggested.
Africa’s burgeoning demography will challenge this future. Subsistence economies remain its anchors, and the alleged "demographic dividend", that some blithely portray as a "driver", will mostly transform into one of rising unemployment and growing informalisation.