Paper short abstract:

Middle class in Africa is a muddle social category whose existence, shape, size, unity and identity are to be probed while there is an urgent need to analyze how this category is being promoted as a central issue of a new understanding of African transformations and policy priorities

Paper long abstract:

Middle classes in Africa are an elusive reality. On the one hand there are clear signs in a number of African countries of the rise of an increasing number of people mainly in urban areas that are now living beyond the poverty line. Those groups of population may not stand as a "middle class" as such. However they are involved in clear processes of social promotion, they manage to invest and reap some benefits from those investments allowing them to enter into a "limited prosperity" (xiao kang : they are no longer poor but are too close to poverty to feel secured ), they adopt new live styles and cherish new hopes of a better life. On the other hand this group is still very much theoretical and elusive and closer to a statistical object than to a social fact. "Middle class in Africa" is very much part of a naming and branding process through which a large range of actors contribute to materialized it. There is neither pure rationality, nor global plot, nor pure domination by "epistemic communities", international organisations or think tanks behind it. However a complex set of actors interacting actors contributes to reshape the understanding of poverty and its relation to development and development assistance. The middle class issue is thus part of a wider move to shape new perceptions of poverty and the means to fight it.