Nairobi News

Nairobi packs everything you get in a robustly insensitive metropolis, from insecurity to a smug and overtaxed yet seemingly uncaring middle class demographic.

But who really is the middle class?

For starters anyone who assertively calls themselves middle class probably isn’t while anyone who consciously denies being middle class probably is.

According to African Development Bank’s 2011 report, 34 per cent or 313 million Africans are now middle class. This effectively means one in three Africans is middle class.

However, I will disregard this classification simply because I think it’s unending vague-it describes the African middle class as those spending anywhere between $2 to $20 a day.

$2 in Chad or Eritrea obviously is astronomically different to the same in Nigeria.

Even in Kenya, if you think Sh160  qualifies you for middle class then you have more serious class (room) problems.

Peer influence

The Nairobi working class is one that astonishingly suffers from peer influence and box thinking.

Everyone wants to be middle class. Apparently there is no difference between the middle and working classes.

Like we do our elections the two have been jumbled up together as the latter tries hard to act like the former.

You see the term middle class is socially acceptable; calling a people the ‘in-betweeners’ or upper lower class seems a bit derogatory, but middle class is chic and a tad more suave.

Maybe a middle class simply is someone who has enough money to afford class-pressured social excesses like the Mingle, circle and Blankets and Wines.

But is the proliferation and subsequent oversubscription of such really an indication of how financially healthy the Nairobi preponderance is?

I think not.

frankmidega@gmail.com