Botswana: Little evidence exists to show a correlation between economic growth and social progress in sub-Saharan Africa

White-walled tyres on his bike appear to elevate a trendy young man from the lower classes but the question is whether he is contributing towards sustainable economic increase.

THE middle classes in the world south have gained growing attention since the turn of the century, mainly through their rapid ascendancy in the Asian emerging economies.

A side result of the economic increase during these “fat years” was a relative increase of monetary gain for a growing number of households. This as well benefited some lower gain groups in resource-rich African economies. A lot of part these crossed the defined poverty levels, which were raised in late 2015 from $1.25 (R16) a person a day to $1.90. As some economists had suggested, from as little as $2 they were considered as entering the “middle class”.

The ominous term was rising like a phoenix from the ashes to characterise this trend. It added an extra label to the packaging of a neo-liberal discourse. By emphasising the free market paradigm as creating the best opportunities for all, it suggests that everyone benefits from a laissezfaire economy.

But the middle class concept remained vague and limited to number crunching. The minimum threshold for entering a so-called middle class in monetary terms was critically vulnerable to a setback into impoverishment. Next all, one sixth of the world’s people has to make a fragile living on $2 to $3 a day.

The African Development Bank played a defining role in promoting the debate. Using the $2 benchmark, it declared some 300 million Africans (about a third of the continent’s people) as being middle class in 2011. A year later it expanded its guesstimates to 300 million to 500 million. It as well set them up as being significant.

Such monetary acrobatics aside, the analytical deficit, which characterises such classification, is problematic. The so-called middle class appears to be a “muddling class”. Rigorously explored differentiation remained largely absent, not to mention any substantial class analysis. Professional activities, social status, cultural, ethnic or religious affinities or lifestyle and political orientations were hardly (if at all) considered.

But lived experiences matter if one is in search of how to define a middle class as an array of collective identities. Such necessary debate has in the meantime arrived in African studies. And the claim to ownership is as well reflected in a just published volume that documents the need to deconstruct the mystification of the middle class being declared as the torchbearers of evolution and development. Politics, economic increase and middle class As alerted in a paper by UNUWIDER, a new middle class as a meaningful social actor does require a collective identity in pursuance of common interests. Once upon a time this was called class-consciousness, based on a “class in itself” while acting as a “class for itself”. Next all, which “middle” is occupied by an African “middle class”, if this is not positioned as well in terms of class awareness and behaviour?

Politically such middle classes seem not as democratic as a lot of of those singing their praises assume. Middle classes have shown ambiguities, ranging from politically progressive engagement to a status-quo oriented, conservative approach to policies (if being political at all). African realities are not different.

In South Africa, the only consistency of the black middle class in historical perspective is its political inconsistency, as political scientist Roger Southall has suggested. They are no additional likely to hold democratic values than other black South Africans. In fact, they are additional likely to want the government to fasten higher order needs such as proper service delivery, infrastructure and policy of law according to their living circumstances rather than basic survival needs.

It remains dubious that middle classes in Africa by their sheer existence promote economic increase.

Their increase was mainly a limited result of the trickledown effects of the resource based economic increase rates during the initial decade of the 21st century since again in decline. This had hardly economic potential stimulating productive investment that contributes towards sustainable economic increase.

There’s as well little evidence of any correlation between economic increase and social evolution, as a working paper of the IMF concludes. While during the “fat years” the poor half became a little less poor, the rich got much richer. Even the African Development Bank admits that the gain discrepancies as measured by the Ginicoefficient have increased, while six part the 10 most unequal nations in the world are in Africa.

Nancy Birdsall, president emeritus of the Centre for World Development, is part the majority prominent advocates and protagonists of the middle class. She argued in support of a middle class rather than a pro-poor developmental orientation.

But she said a sensible political economy analysis needs to differentiate between the rich with political leverage and the rest.

She remained nevertheless adamant that the middle class is an ingredient for good governance. This is based on her assumption that continued economic increase reduces inequalities. She said a growing middle class has a better interest in an accountable government and supports a social arrangement, which taxes it as an investment into collective public goods to the benefit of as well the poor. Dream on! Time to lift the ideological haze It remains necessary to put the record straight and lift the ideological haze. By presently the UN’s development programme’s human development 2013 statement, which as well promoted the middle class hype, predicted that 80% of middle classes would come from the world South by 2030, but only 2% from Sub-Saharan Africa.Recent assessments claim that it’s not the middle of African societies which expands, but the lower and higher social groups.

According to a statement by the Pew Research Centre, only a few African nations had a meaningful increase of those in the middleincome category.

And the Economist, which before shifted its doomsday visions of a Hopeless Continenttowards Africa Rising and the “Continent of Hope”, presently concludes that Africans are mainly rich or poor but not middle class.

Fortunately, the debate has created sufficient awareness part scholars to explore the fact and fiction of the assumed transformative power of a middle class. This as well includes the need to be sensitive towards ideological smokescreens that try to make us believe a middle class is the cure. In reality little has changed at the same time as it comes to control over social and political affairs.

The engagement with the African middle class phenomenon is nevertheless anything but obsolete. Independent of their numbers, middle class members signify modified social relations. These deserve attention and analysis with the emphasis on social relations.