Their buying power is evident around Kampala, a green and hilly city where iron-sheet homes are interspersed with high-rise condos, streets are crowded with bikes and Japanese sedans, and the city’s newest mall, Oasis, is under construction. It will be anchored by what amounts to sub-Saharan Africa’s first Target-style superstore chain, Nakumatt, which sells corn flour, aromatherapy bath salts and nearly everything else. The company is opening two other superstores here, two in Rwanda, three in Tanzania and 11 in Kenya.Said Thiagarajan Ramamurthy, Nakumatt’s operations director: “The appetite is increasing—the 14-inch TV became a 21-inch. The 21 became a 29 and the 29 became plasma. It’s an aspiration.”
The middle ranks include secretaries, computer gurus, merchants and others who have benefited from economic growth of around 6 per cent annually in countries like Uganda, Ghana and Kenya, and around 8 per cent in Rwanda. As Ramamurthy sees it, the growth of consumer culture reflects something more significant than the availability of Chilean wines and red patent leather pumps from Paris. It reflects a gradual opening up of African economies and a change in how people define themselves.
Ruharo’s identity has to do with where he shops and what he buys, which in turn reflects the wider world he greets each day on the Internet and cable TV or on occasional trips to London. “What matters is your lifestyle,” said Ruharo, “The car you drive—it should be a Japanese import. You have to live in an apartment. The BlackBerry is important. It’s purely a status symbol because no one here is that busy yet.”
Ruharo, who started his own business developing text-messaging products for cellphone companies, now has 14 employees, recent college graduates who share his taste for designer jeans and iPods.
Vijay Mahajan, a University of Texas business professor, recently coined the phrase “Africa 2s” to describe people who are neither desperately poor (Africa 3s) nor obnoxiously rich (Africa 1s), and says the middle group is one of the most important drivers of economic growth in Africa. Mahajan, who has written a book, Africa Rising, says, “(Africa2s) are the people sending their kids to school ... who are the most optimistic, the most forward-thinking.”
On any afternoon in Kampala, the parking lot of the Garden City mall is full of Africa 2s like Zubedah Nanfuka, shopping inside the dimly lit, air-conditioned expanse. “It’s the one place you can be international and keep up with friends from Western countries,” said Nanfuka, a 27-year-old programme assistant at an embassy who until recently hosted a local lifestyle TV show called Cook and Dine. “If you say ‘I shop at Garden City’, it puts you in a certain class.”
Mariam Adam, a cosmetologist and playwright, said that her friends come to the mall even though they can’t afford to buy much. She said it’s not so much about shopping, but rather what the mall represents. “People come to be seen here, so other people assume you have money. Things have changed a lot,” she said, recalling the days when she felt shabby compared with a visitor from London. “Now, someone from London can come and they’re wearing the same shoes I have.”
