The Grocery-Shopping Practices of the Lower-Middle Classes in Johannesburg, South Africa April 2013 Summary The black middle class in Johannesburg is a much debated but ill-defined phenomenon, treated more often by economic players than by social scientists. Far from static and clear, the concept of the middle class is for us relevant insofar as it reveals crucial dynamics of the society. Looking more ...

Hardly a week goes by without an African investors’ conference or growth summit. Portuguese people are looking for jobs in Angola. Silicon Valley companies are arriving in Kenya to learn about Africa’s ICT revolution. The reason behind these tendencies is that Africa’s growth, since the turn of the century, has been robust, broad-based and is making important contributions to poverty reduction. If the ...

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) 32 years of dictatorship and almost ten years of war have bled the country dry and left its administration incapable of providing the population with basic services and the government incapable of applying or even formulating public policy. The land sector has not been spared by the collapse of the State, which started at the beginning of the nineties and is ...

June 5, 2012, Brussels -event report.This seminar addressed the potential benefits of ICTs over agriculture in Africa. HélèneQuénot-Suarez, Research Fellow at Ifri’s Sub-African program, underlined in introduction the importance of agriculture for Africa reminding that more than 60 percent of the population still depend on it. Yet, the production remains rather inefficient. According to her, ICTs offer the ...

RÉMI BOURGEOT: CAN TURKEY DO WITHOUT EUROPE? One of the available explanations accounting for recent Turkish performance would supposedly be Turkey’s distancing itself from Europe and gaining alternative markets, especially in the Middle East. Rémi Bourgeot, an economist expert on emerging countries, thus tackled the theme of the Turkish economy’s progressive “orientalisation”.Indeed, there would be no point ...

What is the Amnesty ...

MTN is focused on reaching new market segments and expanding its data services in some of its biggest markets, including Nigeria The Africa Report: Nigeria is MTN’s largest market in Africa with 17.8m subscribers. Where do you see the room for growth in the Nigerian market? 
Penetration rates in Nigeria have increased tremendously in the last few years. In a market with penetration of 30-40%, there’s still ...

Leaving the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, where she fought the scourge of counterfeit drugs, Dora Akunyili has been trying to re-brand Nigeria while serving in the government of President Umaru Yar’Adua Leaving the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, where she fought the scourge of counterfeit drugs, Dora Akunyili has been trying to re-brand Nigeria ...

 Somalia’s best-known novelist, Nuruddin Farah, explains his often controversial themes in the context of his relationship with 
the troubled country of his birth “It is preferable to be the hand above than the one below,” says Nuruddin Farah, quoting the Koran to me as we meet during a break between his scheduled readings and dialogues with other writers at the Berlin Literature Festival. Earlier, the ...

 Soon after assuming office in the country’s new power-sharing government, finance minister Tendai Biti gave a vivid account of the challenges he faces. Biti has been given perhaps the most unenviable post in the unity government as the country is faced with multimillion percent inflation, several millions of people dependent on humanitarian aid and a system 
of physical and human infrastructure which has ...