AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A surge in disposable income and the growth in Africa’s middle class has led to an upswing in the number of shopping centers across the continent, a June 2014 report said.
With shoppers searching for new ways to spend their money, and investors keen to help them do it, 14 new shopping centers opened between 2012 and 2013, according to research by Sagaci, a market intelligence organization. Excluding South Africa, there were 242 shopping centers operating on the continent last year, the report said.
“The middle class is developing. And the people in it want to spend their money,” Julien Garcier, a partner at Sagaci, told AFP. More than 180 other retail developments are in the pipeline, according to the researchers, funded “largely by local investors.”
Just one shopping center closed in 2013, the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, which was shut after an attack by the Somali extremist group al-Shabaab in which 67 people were killed.
According to the International Monetary Fund, 150 million people can be considered firmly in the continent’s middle class. Another 150 million are part of the more-vulnerable “floating” middle class, whose members are susceptible to financial shocks that could push them back into poverty.
Sub-Saharan African economies are some of the fastest growing in the world and were expected to expand by more than 5 percent in 2014.
Although much of the continent’s growth has come from oil, gas and other natural resources, the emergence of a middle class also has boosted consumer growth. According to a study by the African Development Bank published in 2011, nearly 34 percent of Africa’s population is middle class, with the group almost tripling since 1980.
In May 2014, the accounting firm Ernst & Young published a report that said many investors are moving into “consumer-related sectors as Africa’s middle class expands.”
Garcier says his research suggests that 30 percent of households in the biggest African cities earn more than $500 a month. He said that in all of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the size of the middle class is “underestimated.”
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