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Middle Classes in Africa pp 1–31Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Introduction: Africa’s Middle Classes in Critical Perspective

Part of the Frontiers of Globalization book series (FOG)

Abstract

In this introductory chapter, the editors dissect the growing interest in the rise of middle classes in Africa. The apparently healthier rates of economic growth that are associated with these (reputed) classes seem to be an omen of a brighter economic and political future in Africa. For the editors of this volume, the middle class in Africa is an ‘overloaded’ class, overloaded with inflated expectations and unexamined assumptions. The editors question these assumptions in three dimensions: the political, the economic, and the dimension of lifestyle, the latter focusing on urbanization, education, and demographic change. They argue that in the continent today there is not one single ‘African middle class’ but rather a plurality of ‘middle classes’. The four sections of this volume (‘Rethinking Concepts of Middle Classes in Africa’, ‘the Recurring Rise and Return of Middle Classes in Africa’, ‘The Political Consequences of the Middle Classes’, and ‘the Formation of Interconnections and Interdependencies’) are introduced, and their contributions to an improved understanding of Africa’s diverse middle classes are outlined.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The referenced publication is a study by the McKinsey management consultancy. The figures cited in its conclusion (and here) are used to refer not least to the company’s own consultative work in Kenya as a ‘success’ story.

  2. 2.

    ‘Growth without development’ , however, has been a familiar phrase in African economic studies since the mid-1960s, and the current patterns of high growth in some African economies are by no means the first (Clower et al. 1966; Arrighi 2002).

  3. 3.

    In South Africa alone, the black middle class may have been as small as 1.7 million in 2004 (Unilever cited after BusinessTech 2015), or as big as 9.3 million in 2007 (Udjo 2008).

  4. 4.

    Some reports also note this complexity. The same report just cited also notes that with regard to Kenya and South Africa , ‘ethnicity , race and caste continue to shape attitudes and influence electoral behaviour’. This would seem to be in contradiction to the first statement .

  5. 5.

    Some commentators predict the coming of a new wave of manufacturing industry in Africa (McKinsey Global Institute 2016). Others, however, insist that the structural changes which an industrial or post-industrial society would require are not present in the current waves of African growth (Taylor 2016, 10–11).

  6. 6.

    In white-ruled Rhodesia , for example, the colonial regime disbursed sums for white education that were 15 times greater per head than those spent on the indigenous African majority (Zvobgo 1981, 14).

  7. 7.

    Ferguson (2015) describes a new politics of distribution in Southern Africa, entailing a stronger involvement of the state in the support of children and elderly people that might change relationships of (financial) care .

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, Germany

    Tabea Scharrer & David O’Kane

  2. Bayreuth University, Bayreuth, Germany

    Lena Kroeker

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  1. Tabea Scharrer
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  2. David O’Kane
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies, Bayreuth, Germany

    Lena Kroeker

  2. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany

    David O'Kane

  3. Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany

    Tabea Scharrer

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Scharrer, T., O’Kane, D., Kroeker, L. (2018). Introduction: Africa’s Middle Classes in Critical Perspective. In: Kroeker, L., O'Kane, D., Scharrer, T. (eds) Middle Classes in Africa. Frontiers of Globalization. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62148-7_1

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