Africa's burgeoning middle class brings hope to a continent

A new financial assertiveness and cultural self-confidence is growing, fuelled by technology

By David Smith in Kinshasa and Johannesburg, Lucy Lamble in Tunis for theguardian - Sunday 25 December 2011 15.05 EST

The Kapayas in Lusaka boast all the hallmarks of a middle-class lifestyle but try to maintain their rural family values. Photograph: Georgina Smith

At the end of another of Kinshasa's potholed roads, lined with shacks and crumbling matchbox houses, comes a sudden clearing. It is a sandy patch of land surrounded by water in which bare-chested boys in dugout canoes paddle among the hyacinths. A giant pump is working day and night, reclaiming land from the sandbanks and river beds, expanding the city in defiance of nature.

Continue reading "Africa's burgeoning middle class brings hope to a continent" »

Comments

[limbekid]

and if I may add,

TV and radio stations could also introduce a "water shed", when under-age consumers are presumably asleep

[BAH ACHO]

how can people be classified according to the amount of money they make?infact some africans are completely lost and do not understand thier own traditions.we look at ourselves with eurocentric eys sorry.