Nearly a decade after the global financial crisis, emerging markets are poised for a middle-class boom. Our experts weigh in on what it will take to sustain growth in 2018 and beyond.

In China

China’s urbanization will continue to present inclusive growth challenges as tens of millions of workers from China’s rural villages move to its cities. "Many of these migrant workers face discriminatory treatment in terms of access to basic services like housing, health care and their children’s education," notes economist Fan Gang, who also serves as director of China’s National Economic Research Institute. "The next stage of advancing inclusive growth in China must be the full inclusion of migrant workers as residents of China’s rapidly expanding cities."

In India

A digital wave in mobile payments and communications has begun to create the conditions for a profound transformation in its economy, which is expected to exceed 7 percent growth in 2018. But for that growth to be truly inclusive, writes Rama Bijapurkar, small businesses and consumers must become full participants in this transformation.

“The problem of digital inclusion is now not about the lack of products or ideas or models, or even customer willingness or ability,” writes Bijapurkar, chairperson of People Research on India’s Consumer Economy. “It is about doing the hard work of enrolling millions of small merchants and having helplines to hold the hands of the hundreds of millions of small consumers who might not be tech savvy but who want to get on board.”

In Africa

In sub-Saharan Africa, political elites across much of the region have been the primary beneficiaries of its stronger economic growth, observes Martyn Davies, a managing director at Deloitte Africa. For inclusive growth to gain traction, African countries will need to diversify their economies away from an overdependence on resource and commodity production and toward manufacturing

Read the full article about inclusive growth in emerging markets across the world by Yuwa Hedrick-Wong at mastercardcenter.org.