Publications /
Policy Paper

Back
Download PDF
French Version
New Consumption Spaces for the New Middle Classes ? Shopping Centres in Abidjan
Authors
Clélie Nallet
April 23, 2018
Related topics: 
Society
Inequality
Africa

Since 2011 and the end of the post-election crisis, Côte d’Ivoire has returned to impressive economic growth. The country and its capital are drawing attention from a growing number of investors, and the “Abidjanian middle classes” are widely publicised and sought after. At the same time, Abidjanian consumption spaces have become particularly diversified and transformed. Abidjan provides many options for consumers who are operating in a competitive environment with a wide selection in terms of places, products and services. The new shopping centres are commonly associated with the middle class. But what realities and social developments do they really represent?

RELATED CONTENT

  • The voice of the voiceless
    Authors
    Helmut Sorge
    March 9, 2022
    It was a grey day with a drizzle here and a drizzle there when mourners gathered at St George’s Cathedral in a usually sunny Capetown to pay their last respect to the Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu, the moral force against Apartheid struggle in South Africa was subdued and thoughtful as human beings when death and a rendezvous with eternity have been called. South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa led his nation and the world in remembering Tutu. He described him as “our moral compass a ...
  • And then I lost her
    Authors
    Helmut Sorge
    February 17, 2022
    Their boat-if you name a large rubber pumped up like a giant tire, was rocked by waves, and the engine halted its movements. On November 24, all the 29 passengers tried to reach coastguard stations in France and England via their cell phones few minutes between life and death. No one answered, and when finally contact was established by another, still floating migrant boat, witnessing the tragedy in the making (New York Times December 14, 2021), they were asked to pinpoint their l ...
  • Download PDF
    Inequality and Political Identity in South Africa
    Authors
    Hisham Aidi
    December 31, 2021
    Xenophobic violence against minorities and non-nationals has erupted periodically in different parts of Africa: against Somalis in Kenya, Nigerians in Ghana, Chadians in Libya, and Asians in South Africa. Scholars have offered various explanations for these outbursts of violence, focusing on inequality or how simultaneous market reforms and democratization can unleash resentment against “market- dominant minorities.” Others see the violence as linked to elections, noting how politic ...
  • Servitude and Protest Movements in the Sahel
    Authors
    Hisham Aidi
    Hisham Aidi
    September 24, 2021
    In July 2021, the United Nations issued a condemnation against the “dramatic rise” in attacks against “descent-based slaves” in Mali, calling the violence “unacceptable”[i]. The statement was in response to a tragic episode in the eastern region of Kayes, where landowners using machetes and rifles assaulted a group of indentured laborers to prevent them working on the landowners’ fields. Tomoya Okobata, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms ...
  • ADEL Portrait: Ana Paula Barreto, Director of Programs at AfroResistance
    Authors
    Sabine Cessou
    September 22, 2020
    « Passionate, Black, visionary » Ana Paula Barreto talks about serious matters with great calm, taking time to reflect before answering questions, from New York. Born in Jardim Angela, a poor area of São Paulo, considered as the most dangerous neighbourhood in the world by the United Nations in 1996, she remembers the violence of the favelas. She doesn’t want to reduce her childhood « in a joyful family » to « the ugly », but one of her strongest ...
  • Anthem Protest
    Authors
    Helmut Sorge
    August 24, 2020
    During the medal ceremony at the Olympic Stadium in Mexico City on October 16, 1968, two Black American athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, each raised a gloved fist during the playing of the U.S. national anthem. The two Americans received their medals shoeless, but wearing black socks to represent black poverty. Smith wore a black scarf around his neck to present black pride. Carlos, who won a bronze medal, wore a necklace of beads, which he said “were for those individua ...
  • Download PDF
    Selective Review of Food Security Policy Worldwide: What can be learned from international experiences in order to shape food security policy in Africa?
    Authors
    Isabelle Tsakok
    Fatima Ezzahra Mengoub
    June 25, 2020
    We are living through unprecedented times. The COVID-19 pandemic threatens not only our health, but the very foundation of life itself: our food security. Now more than ever, we are forced to rethink our food security as we witness the widespread dislocations to our food system, forcing millions to beg for food for the first time. During normal times, our world produces enough nutritious food for all but millions still go hungry every day. Why does this happen and what can be done t ...
  • I Can’t Breathe
    Authors
    Helmut Sorge
    June 12, 2020
    She is just seventeen. An African-American high-school student. If Darnella Frazier had not turned on her cellphone on May 25, when she witnessed four police officers arresting a black man in Minneapolis, the world would never have known how George Floyd died that day, or why. A convenience store employee had called the police, accusing Mr Floyd of buying cigarettes with a fake $20 bill. Possibly Mr Floyd resisted arrest, which did not result in a “medical incident” as the ...