Meet Denis Ruharo, an entrepreneur with a master’s degree, a man who carries a BlackBerry and two Nokia cellphones, buys organic greens at a grocery store and sometimes does business over a cold Nile beer at a club called Silk. “I have the mortgage and home improvement,” he said, glancing at the budget he and his wife keep on their computer. “The car, carwash and parking tickets. Entertainment — cable TV, two movies a month. The health club. Then normally we vacation twice a year. Last time it was Nairobi.” “What else,” he said, scrolling down on his Mac PowerBook. “Newspapers, charity, clothes, books and CDs . . . ” In a region more often associated with grinding poverty, Ruharo is part of a modestly growing segment of sub-Saharan Africa — upwardly mobile, low- to middle-income consumers.
That’s the intro of a glowing story on the growing African middle class in The Washington Post. Apparently people like Mr Ruharo are known as “Africa 2s.”
The reporter Stephanie McCrummen earlier filed a story about how “… to a growing number of foreign investors, sub-Saharan Africa … represents dazzling opportunities to make money.” That story here.
Seems we Africans have a problem calculating. IF the total Sub Saharan African population is around 800 million and barely 26% are above $2 per day how do we generate a middle class of 300 million?. give the Bhalla standard (Second among equals) standard of US$10 per day as the middle class threshold (the G7 average poverty line) we would probabaly find 5% or less (i.e, 40 million) in the real middle class. The African middle class is a future phenomenon- probably post 2020 before we start seeing decisive change generated from the middle class. The 200 million or so who are above $2 per day are probably the base from which this middle class will be drawn but there is still a long way to go