HAYA, habari ndio hii kutoka kwa African Development Bank...
Size of middle class in total population in EAST AFRICA /2010
Kenya - 44.9%
Uganda - 18.7%
Tanzania - 12.1%
Rwanda - 7.7%
Burundi - 5.3%
Proportion of people living under $1.25 per day in East Africa in 2010
Tanzania - 82.4%
Burundi - 81.32%
Rwanda - 74.43%
Uganda - 51.53%
Kenya - 19.72%
Graphs na links hizi hapa,
http://www.afdb.org/fileadmin/upload...%20Pyramid.pdf
View attachment 47560View attachment 47561
2.1 The middle class can be defined in
relative or absolute terms. In relative terms,
the middle class is defined as individuals or
households that fall between the 20th and
80th percentile of the consumption
distribution or between 0.75 and 1.25 times
median per capita income, respectively
2
.
Using the absolute approach, the middle
class is usually defined as individuals with
annual income exceeding $3,900 in
purchasing power parity (PPP) terms
3
or with
daily per capita expenditure between $2 to $4
and those with daily per capita expenditures
between $6 and $10
4
.
2.2 The middle class is widely
acknowledged to be Africa's future, the group
that is crucial to the continent's economic and
political development. But it is difficult to define
exactly who falls into this key group and even
harder still to establish how many middle class
people there are in Africa. Recent estimates
put the size of the middle class in the region in
the neighborhood of 300 to 500 million
people, representing the population that is
between Africa's vast poor and the continent's
few elite. Africa's emerging middle class
comprises roughly the size of the middle class
in India or China.
We can choose to call them whatever we want but that does not take aware from the fact that 19.72% of Kenyans live on less than $1.25 per day and these people make up the most impoverished segment of our society without the access to most basic amenities the figure is worse in the rest of the other East African countries.
On the other hand, the upward mobility has realized the upswing in the numbers living on over $1.25 a day. These are the FACTS we can argue semantics but can not deny the FACTS! There are many that will seek to discredit the reports but the sooner we accept the reality the better and we can learn from this and make our countries much better.