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Between Wi-Fi, weekend brunch, and wallet panic: A playful but piercing look at Africa’s most fragile social tier. The Soft Life Starter Pack There’s a kind of African who will argue with a market woman or their Uber driver over 50 rand, 2,000 francs, or 1,500 naira then walk into a restaurant and pay four times that for a Daiquiri cocktail and steak. They might earn in cedis but dream in dollars. They probably have a 9–5, three side hustles, and one burner Twitter account. They rent in Lekki or Kilimani, live on data bundles, say things like “I’m in tech,” and buy things in instalments. They’ve made soft life a mantra, but still sweat each debit alert like it’s a robbery. This, allegedly, is the African middle class. But who are they, really? And do they even exist? Definitions Are for the IMF The World Bank tried to define the African middle class. Then gave up. The African Development Bank had a go too: they said if you earn between $2 and $20 a day, you’re middle class. Two dollars a day. Middle Class? Your rent just laughed in three languages. See, the problem is that most of these definitions were cooked up in Geneva boardrooms and tested against economies that aren’t trying to survive both corruption and currency crashes. What does “middle class” mean in societies where you have DSTV but no electricity, where a Master’s degree still doesn’t get you your own apartment, or where you can afford a quick trip to Dubai but can’t afford to fall sick? We’re not dealing with a class. We’re dealing with vibes, a lifestyle held together by social pressure, secondhand Wi-Fi, and just enough money to look like you have more money. Everyone is Faking Stability In African cities today, appearance is capital. You dress the part, speak the part, tweet the part, even when your reality is bouncing like a bad cheque. You might look like a “young African professional,” but: Your salary disappears on the 3rd of the month. You go to therapy and pay with borrowed money. You’re investing in crypto but owe your tailor. It’s more of survival. We live in societies where success is often measured by what you show, not what you save. Where weddings are funded by loans, and Instagram reels have more influence than economic policies. The middle class here isn’t rich; they just have access to language, to visas (if they’re lucky), to a certain kind of curated modernity. But that access is slippery. You miss one paycheck, and the whole illusion collapses. The Hustle is the Economy One thing is true- there are no stable jobs. There are only gigs, grants, freelance contracts, and partnership opportunities. That’s why the African middle class is always in motion. By day, they’re accountants. By night, they’re MCs. On weekends, they run a thrift business on IG, and Monday mornings, they’re writing pitch decks for someone else’s startup. This is the real engine of urban life in Africa: educated, ambitious people doing the most to stay afloat. They sell wigs, they host webinars, they run social media pages for brands that can’t pay them. It’s a condition. One that’s too educated to be poor, too broke to be rich, and too tired to explain it. So, Are They Real or Not? Yes, the African middle class exists. But not in the way it’s written in reports. They are not a number. They are a mood, a compromise. They are stuck in traffic, making voice notes about their startup. They are fluent in three languages: English, emoji, and silence. They are tired, hopeful, stylish, and occasionally delusional. What defines them is not income, it’s instability wrapped in confidence. The Most Expensive Illusion on the Continent Being middle class in Africa often means this: You earn just enough to dream, but not enough to rest. You belong everywhere and nowhere. You know the taste of imported wine and the sting of a bounced debit card. Maybe the African middle class isn’t fake. Maybe it’s just fragile. Written by Kemi Adedoyin 

Written by Kemi Adedoyin With so many official languages in Africa, no one has ever heard of N|uu to be considered as an official language.  Once spoken freely across the arid plains of the Northern Cape, N|uu predates all languages by thousands of years. It is one of the oldest known languages that shaped how the ǂKhomani San people understood the world. Today, only one person speaks it fluently: a 90-year-old woman named Ouma Katrina Esau. She is the last echo of a language that has survived colonization, forced assimilation, and near-erasure. A Language That Carries Time N|uu belongs to the Tuu family of click languages, spoken by the ǂKhomani San people, who are indigenous hunter-gatherers and whose history stretches back over 20,000 years. If you’re wondering who the San people are, think of the Africans or the main actor in the movie “The Gods Must be Crazy”. The language is considered a highly endangered language complex, boasting over 100 distinct phonemes, including five different types of clicks. Each sound, each rhythm, holds cultural and ecological knowledge passed down orally through generations. Erasure by Force But like many Indigenous languages, N|uu was nearly extinguished not by time, but by policy. Colonial expansion in southern Africa violently displaced the San from their lands. Then came apartheid, which classified the ǂKhomani as “Coloured,” erasing their ethnic identity and forcing them into Afrikaans-speaking communities. San children, including Ouma Katrina, were forbidden from speaking their mother tongue in school. Many were beaten for it. Over time, younger generations lost the language entirely, not out of choice, but out of fear and shame. By the late 20th century, N|uu had all but disappeared. It was widely assumed to be extinct. But in the early 1990s, researchers discovered that several elderly San women in the Northern Cape still spoke it haltingly, privately, and with deep emotion. Among them was Katrina Esau, who had never received a formal education but held within her a full, living memory of the language. A Personal Mission Becomes Global After the death of her sister Anna in 2021, Ouma Katrina became the last known fluent speaker of N|uu. For most people, this would be a burden too heavy to carry. But for her, it became a mission. With the help of her granddaughter, Claudia Snyman, and the support of a small group of linguists and cultural workers, Ouma Katrina began teaching basic N|uu to local children. She introduced a new generation to a language they’d never heard, but that belonged to them. She also worked with experts to create a digital N|uu dictionary, developed learning materials and co-authored a children’s book, Qhoi n|a Tijho (Tortoise and Ostrich), written in N|uu and English. Her voice has been recorded and archived, capturing pronunciation, tone, and cadence. For her efforts, she has received multiple national honors, including the Order of the Baobab (Silver), and was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Cape Town in 2023. But accolades mean less to her than the children who now know how to say “hello” or sing a lullaby in N|uu. The Fragility of One Voice Despite her work, the reality remains sobering that there are no other fluent speakers. Children are learning basic words and phrases, but none have achieved fluency. The challenge is immense. A language that evolved over millennia cannot be revived in a decade, especially without systemic support, government funding, or integration into formal education systems. Still, the fact that N|uu exists at all today is nothing short of remarkable. And it exists because of one woman’s refusal to let it vanish. What’s at stake is more than words. When a language dies, an entire way of seeing the world disappears with it. Ecological knowledge, oral history, philosophy, humor, spirituality – all embedded in the structure of a language- are lost. The erosion of N|uu mirrors a global crisis; nearly half of the world’s 7,000 languages are at risk of extinction by the end of the century. Most of them are Indigenous. Most are unrecorded. Most will be lost silently. What Is Lost When a Language Dies? Losing a language is not just a linguistic tragedy, it is the loss of a worldview. Languages shape how people relate to nature, time, memory, and each other. The disappearance of languages like N|uu also raises critical questions about what development and modernity have cost Indigenous communities, whose cultural knowledge has often been dismissed in favor of colonial languages and frameworks. A Legacy Beyond Language Ouma Katrina’s work has transformed her from a quiet matriarch into a cultural icon. But she doesn’t see herself that way. To her, teaching N|uu is about restoring dignity to herself, to her people, and to the land that shaped them. She often says she is not fighting for herself but for future generations. For the children who will one day know who they are not just by what they see, but by what they say and how they say it. If the clicks of N|uu survive, even in fragments, they will carry her voice. And that voice will remind the world that no language, no matter how endangered, is truly dead until we stop listening. N|uu is also a cautionary tale. It shows how the survival of a language may come down to one person’s determination.