Recent increases in the size of African middle classes have excited speculation about the economic implications of these developments. This review paper argues that to understand these, we must first interrogate our analytic assumptions about the middle class and its relationship to the private sector across the continent. Africa's middle classes are born out of a different relationship with the private sector than classical theories suggest. Rather than one, homogenous middle class (or private sector), there are multiple kinds, and hence, many of our universalizing analytic assumptions about the character of that class-and its likely economic impact-may not hold.
The stated economic policy of the African National Congress (ANC) underwent a dramatic shift in the 1990s, away from a soft-left redistributionist position to one much more closely aligned with the policy preferences of the South African business community. To what extent can this shift be attributed to lobbying efforts by that community? The article reviews the development of economic policy by the ANC in the 1990s, and concludes that while business was undoubtedly influential in this process, much of that influence was indirect and derived from two sets of sources: first, the international policy consensus around the neo-liberal reform agenda; and second, indirect signals from ‘the market’ by means of such mechanisms as movements in the value of the currency, and investor and business confidence.
Recent increases in the size of African middle classes have excited speculation about the economic implications of these developments. This review paper argues that to understand these, we must first interrogate our analytic assumptions about the middle class and its relationship to the private sector across the continent. Africa's middle classes are born out of a different relationship with the private sector than classical theories suggest. Rather than one, homogenous middle class (or private sector), there are multiple kinds, and hence, many of our universalizing analytic assumptions about the character of that class-and its likely economic impact-may not hold.
The dominant developmental approach in Africa over the last twenty years has been to advocate the role of markets and the private sector in restoring economic growth. Recent thinking has also stressed the need for 'ownership' of economic reform by the populations of developing countries, particularly the business community. This book studies the business-government interactions of four African countries: Ghana, Zambia, South Africa and Mauritius. Employing a historical institutionalist approach, Antoinette Handley considers why and how business in South Africa and Mauritius has developed the capacity to constructively contest the making of economic policy while, conversely, business in Zambia and Ghana has struggled to develop any autonomous political capacity. Paying close attention to the mutually constitutive interactions between business and the state, Handley considers the role of timing and how ethnicised and racialised identities can affect these interactions in profound and consequential ways.
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