Africa 2 Rises

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. The group includes working Africans who make as little as $200 a month, a paltry sum by Western standards, yet hardly the $1 a day that describes life for about half the continent’s population. Perhaps a third of all Africans, or 300 million people, fall into a middle category—struggling to put their kids through school and pay rent, but able to buy a cellphone or DVD once in a while.

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.”

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