How Africa’s Middle Class Does Money

by B. Traven

The BBC recently asked two Ivory Coast residents — one middle class, living on $20 a day, and one surviving just above the poverty line at $2 a day — how they get by.

The spending breakdowns are fascinating. Both men, for example, spend way more on food than on rent.

More interesting is what they have to say for themselves:

“I cannot say I’m wealthy but I cannot say I’m poor because if I’m living it means I can sustain my life,” says Konan Kouassi Vercruysses, who makes between $240 and $530 a month running a phone booth with his cousin — two to five times the country’s median income.

“I don’t like the word poor because if you have this in your mind it brings you down.”

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