The Rise of a Middle Class in East and Southern Africa: Implications for Food System Transformation

By D. Tschirley, T. Reardon, Michael Dolislager, Jason L. Snyder. 2014

320 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We examine the implications of the rise of a middle class in East and Southern Africa for food consumption patterns and the food system. A unique classification of food items shows that highly processed food has one-third of the purchased food market, with comparable shares in rural and urban areas (31 per cent vs 35 per cent), and among the vulnerable and upper middle classes (33 per cent vs 41 per cent). By linking FAOSTAT import data to consumption bundles, we show that the net import share falls with income in urban areas. Implications for food system change to 2040 are discussed.

Subfields: Business and International Management, Nutrition and Dietetics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/aa537576e8c66ee41a259955cc58b4f95dc7096f

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In Business and International Management

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Commercialization and upgrading in the aquaculture value chain in Zambia (2017, background): “A favorable economic climate, the growing strength of domestic markets due to a rising demand for fish from a rapidly emergent middle class (Tschirley et al., 2015), and the increasing price of wild-caught fish are cited as factors that have enabled aquaculture development in Africa (FAO, 2016; Hech”
The Safe Food Imperative: Accelerating Progress in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (2018, background): “For Sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion of food bought through the informal sector is expected only to decline to 50–70 percent by 2040 (Tschirley et al. 2014).”
Tapping the economic and nutritional power of vegetables (2017, background): “Further, the consumption of processed, or even ultra-processed, foods and beverages is increasing fast, even in rural areas (Tschirley et al., 2015).”