adminMiddle-class households in 11 leading sub-Saharan African economies, excluding SA, are set to balloon to about 40 million by 2030, as the benefits of economic growth are more inclusively distributed. Business Week reports that this is according to Standard Bank Group, which said about 15m of the 110m households in Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia are lower-middle-class and middle-class, consuming from $15 to $115 a day.
About 86 percent of households are low-income, consuming less than $15 a day, it said.
‘‘Between 2000 and 2014, we’ve seen a tripling of middle-class households across these 11 countries,’’ Simon Freemantle, a political economist at Standard Bank, and author of the report, Understanding Africa’s Middle Class, said.
The emergence of a middle class was found to be most profound in Nigeria, which has Africa’s largest economy Freemantle says the performance remains broadly supportive of the ‘‘Africa Rising’’ narrative — despite the bank’s middle-class estimate being considerably lower than the 350m people reported by the African Development Bank in 2011, reports Polity.
He said that there is an undeniable rise in income across many of Africa’s key frontier economies, allowing the formation and strengthening of a substantial middle class.
‘‘However, the scale of Africa’s middle class ascent has, we believe, been somewhat exaggerated in line with the at times breathless ‘Africa Rising’ narrative.’’
He says the report aims to offer a more accurate depiction of the size of the middle class, without undermining optimism about the continent’s advance.
Freemantle said in a Business Day report that these 11 sub-Saharan African countries offered opportunities. ‘‘That’s a clear opportunity for the types of companies that are looking to allocate investments to try and capitalise on that.’’
The economies of Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia were chosen as they together account for half of Africa’s total gross domestic product and half its population. — Business Week.
Online Reporter