Tag Archives: Africa

May 6, 2011 · 6:18 am

One in three Africans is now middle class, report finds | Global development | The Guardian

The world is changing….

We just need to change with it…

And adjust our perceptions to the new reality….

We aren’t the only rich consumer society anymore…

From The Guardian:

One in three Africans is middle class, a rising group of consumers to rival those of China and India, researchers have found.

Record numbers of people in Africa own houses and cars, use mobile phones and the internet and send their children to private schools and foreign universities, according to the African Development Bank.

Mthuli Ncube, the bank’s chief economist, said the findings should challenge long-held perceptions of Africa as a continent of famine, poverty and hopelessness.

“Hey you know what, the world please wake up, this is a phenomenon in Africa that we’ve not spent a lot of time thinking about,” Ncube said. “There is a middle class that is driven by specific factors such as education and we should change our view and work with this group to create a new Africa and make sure Africa realises its full potential.”

Ncube said the study used an absolute definition of middle class, meaning people who spend between $2 and $20 a day, which he believed was appropriate given the cost of living for Africa’s nearly 1 billion people.

The study found that, by last year, Africa’s middle class had risen to about 34% of the continent’s population, or about 313m people – up from around 111m (26%) in 1980 and 196m (27%) in 2000.

More:   One in three Africans is now middle class, report finds | Global development | The Guardian.

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April 1, 2011 · 8:36 am

How Susie Bayer’s T-Shirt Ended Up on Yusuf Mama’s Back

This is a fascinating article about what happens to donated clothing…

We send tons of stuff to Goodwill each year and I wondered what the process was and what happened to all that stuff.

Now I know…..

From the  George Packer at the New Times back in 2002:

If you’ve ever left a bag of clothes outside the Salvation Army or given to a local church drive, chances are that you’ve dressed an African. All over Africa, people are wearing what Americans once wore and no longer want. Visit the continent and you’ll find faded remnants of secondhand clothing in the strangest of places. The ”Let’s Help Make Philadelphia the Fashion Capital of the World” T-shirt on a Malawian laborer. The white bathrobe on a Liberian rebel boy with his wig and automatic rifle. And the muddy orange sweatshirt on the skeleton of a small child, lying on its side in a Rwandan classroom that has become a genocide memorial.

A long chain of charity and commerce binds the world’s richest and poorest people in accidental intimacy. It’s a curious feature of the global age that hardly anyone on either end knows it.

A few years ago, Susie Bayer bought a T-shirt for her workouts with the personal trainer who comes regularly to her apartment on East 65th Street in Manhattan. It was a pale gray cotton shirt, size large, made in the U.S.A. by JanSport, with the red and black logo of the University of Pennsylvania on its front. Over time, it got a few stains on it, and Bayer, who is 72, needed more drawer space, so last fall she decided to get rid of the shirt. She sent it, along with a few other T-shirts and a couple of silk nightgowns, to the thrift shop that she has been donating her clothes to for the past 40 years.

More:  How Susie Bayer’s T-Shirt Ended Up on Yusuf Mama’s Back – New York Times.

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