International organisations and their local allies continue to press for the further expansion of social protection across Africa, often in the face of resistance. The future politics of social protection in Africa will be shaped by endogenous and exogenous changes. Endogenous changes involve feedback effects from the past and continuing expansion of social protection; these can be either positive or negative in terms of further expansion. Exogenous effects result from the changing structural context, including especially population growth, urbanisation, and climate change. As the Covid-19 pandemic and related lockdowns showed, even those exogenous shocks which reveal gaps in current provision need not prompt enduring expansions of social protection. Neither endogenous nor exogenous changes are likely to shift African countries off their current varied pathways; considerable political obstacles to the further expansion of social protection will persist.
Social protection, Africa, feedback effects, shocks, international organisations, climate change, urbanisation.
Scholars of social protection policymaking in Africa (as elsewhere) spend most of our time looking in the rear-view mirror, trying to understand the processes that did (or did not) result in significant reforms of policy in the past. If we try to look forward and predict how policymaking and implementation will evolve in future, our understanding of the past is the necessary starting point. But perhaps the politics of social protection in future will not be the same as it has been hitherto. This might be because of changes that are endogenous to social protection, insofar as social protection programmes generate pressures for change through feedback loops. Or it might be because of exogenous changes arising from long-term structural changes (such as climate change or urbanisation) or sudden shocks (such as pandemics and droughts).
The literature on the past politics of social protection in Africa has exploded in recent years (Seekings 2020). This comprises primarily country case studies, with additional work on international organisations and the ideas and discourses that travel (or are transported) to and within the region. Research initially focused on the interactions between international organisations (including the International Labour Organization (ILO), World Bank, HelpAge International, and donors such as the UK’s Department for International Development3) and national governments (e.g. Hickey et al. 2019; Foli 2023; Ouma and Adésínà 2019). More recently, researchers have turned to how and why states expand and ‘institutionalise’ programmes after their initial introduction (Lavers and Hickey 2021), how they implement their policies (Lavers 2022), and what the effects are on citizen–state relations (Seekings et al. 2023).
This existing literature suggests ten major findings:
What do findings such as these suggest is likely in the future, in response to endogenous and exogenous pressures and opportunities?
Section 2 examines endogenous and exogenous effects on the international organisations that lobby for expansion. Section 3 discusses feedback effects of expansion on bureaucrats in national states. Section 4 discusses feedback effects on politicians, whilst Section 5 considers feedback effects on public opinion. Sections 6, 7, and 8 respectively consider exogenous demographic changes, the effects of urbanisation and economic change, and the effects of natural disasters. Section 9 concludes.
Diverse international organisations have embraced social protection, although their preferred models and the normative bases of their preferences differ. Is their enthusiasm likely to continue or to ebb?
It is unclear whether their institutional structures create strong vested organisational interests, but it would be difficult for most organisations to backtrack on their enthusiastic discourses of recent years. The pressures on organisations to ensure that the poor (and especially the very poor) benefit directly from donor largesse are surely likely to persist. These pressures are in part exogenous but also in part endogenous, in that international organisations have played a leading role in driving the research that has demonstrated the benefits of social protection. Ulrich, Nystrand and Buur (2022) suggest that there is considerable scope for reallocating budget from other developmental programmes to social protection, to increase the budget for the latter. Even if their proposal does not get traction, international organisations’ enduring commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) surely means that it is not unlikely that the budgets allocated to (targeted) social protection will continue to rise.
What might dampen their enthusiasm? Recent research – as reported in, for example, Ugo Gentilini’s weekly newsletter (Gentilini 2024) – has tended to complicate the analysis, showing that programmes may have varied effects (including no effects) on different outcomes, with the clearest benefits often depending on concurrent other services (hence the push for ‘cash plus’). In the absence of any strong evidence that alternative interventions have more benefits, international organisations are likely to continue to push for the expansion of social protection – and to sponsor further research that continues to legitimate this. Dramatic exogenous shifts in the governance of international organisations are imaginable: the continued rise in Europe or North America of right-wing parties and politicians opposed to expenditure on ‘international development’ might restrict the resources available and even undermine the ideological consensus on poverty reduction. It is hard to assess the risk of this or the timescale if it should happen. But the British case sounds a warning: citing austerity, the UK government reneged on its previous commitment to allocate 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) to aid (Loft and Brien 2023).
The literature on the adoption and institutionalisation of social protection suggests that the bureaucrats in the national department with direct responsibility for social protection policy generally constitute a core constituency in the policy coalitions advocating the adoption of programmes. International organisations invest heavily in taking senior bureaucrats on study tours to countries with more extensive social protection and to educational workshops on the benefits of social protection in the belief that there will be cross-national demonstration effects (including the negative effect of inducing shame among officials who resist the supposedly ‘modernising’ message). Case studies have documented examples of the roles played by bureaucrats in both successful and largely unsuccessful reforms. The support of national bureaucrats in the ministry responsible for social protection might be a necessary condition for successful reform, but it is clearly not a sufficient condition. Most obviously, support for reform within the responsible government department might be of little consequence if the finance ministry or president prefer not to prioritise expenditure on social protection.
There is less work on whether recent episodes of social protection expansion generate positive or negative feedback effects within national bureaucracies. My impression is that there is variation in the extent to which bureaucrats embrace social protection. The promotional activities of international organisations undoubtedly often broaden and consolidate support (as argued by Davis et al. 2016), but there appear to be cases where national bureaucrats resist these inducements and communications. Insofar as they have a vested interest in expanding the programmes that they do (or would) administer, these can be offset by bureaucrats’ own discourses, beliefs, and objectives.
Perhaps the strongest evidence for feedback effects on bureaucrats comes from countries that pioneered the expansion of social protection in Africa. Where social protection has a long history and wide reach, and resources are available, further expansion often appears fiscally and logistically possible. If the merits of social protection are to some extent taken for granted, expansion might appear to be politically feasible. In South Africa, and perhaps neighbouring countries also, the expansion of social grants to uncovered risks or populations is rarely (if ever) absent from the government agenda, i.e. expansion is always an option. Even in these cases, however, bureaucrats – at national and local levels – appear to have mixed feelings about expansion. The more recent evidence on bureaucratic (and semi-bureaucratic) gatekeepers in South Africa and Botswana suggests that they do not see themselves nor act as having a vested interest to expanding social protection. Officials view (and treat) poor people negatively, persuaded that social grants have fuelled a ‘dependency’ on ‘handouts’ (Granlund 2022; Seekings 2023).
In Ghana, however, the expansion of social protection (through the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme) has resulted in a shift in attitudes among state officials at the local level. Administering the programme has brought officials into closer contact with poor, local communities, challenging their narratives about poverty and leading them to treat beneficiaries with (unexpected) respect (Ibrahim 2023).
Whilst international organisations may have initiated and funded many pilot or nascent social protection programmes, and bureaucrats might have joined in the coalitions advocating social protection reforms, national politicians have been the key players in accepting or resisting an expansion of public provision. International organisations target their educational efforts at politicians as well as bureaucrats, although status hierarchies mean that they have more access to Members of Parliament (MPs) than to ministers.
There is little systematic evidence on how attitudes among politicians have changed over time. Case studies suggest that the ministers responsible for social protection only sometimes act as energetic champions of expansion. Enthusiasm is typically moderated by their sensitivity to the norms and preferences that prevail within the senior ranks of their parties. Indeed, caution might be a necessary component of any expansionary strategy. This opens senior politicians to the criticism that they backtracked on their ambitions – a criticism levelled, for example, at Namibia’s Minister for Poverty Eradication, former Bishop Kameeta, who prior to his appointment had championed a basic income grant (The Namibian 2020).
Studies of MPs suggest that resistance to the expansion of social protection remains widespread. In Zambia, for example, MPs from all parties could articulate a positive narrative about social protection but remained fundamentally sceptical (Kuss and Gerstenberg 2023; Hallink 2019). The fact that the Zambian government had committed itself to expansion in 2013–14 did not prevent its successor – from the same party – defunding social protection in order to divert resources to other programmes (Siachiwena and Seekings 2024).
How politicians view social protection might depend on how programmatic expansion affects their patronage networks. Whilst there have been instances of large-scale corruption in social protection, and using programmes for patronage is not uncommon, many other policies offer more opportunities for corrupt enrichment or political gain. At both national and local levels, allocating scarce government resources to social protection might mean that there are fewer resources for politicians’ preferred policies. On the other hand, even politicians who rely on patronage might welcome the expansion of social grants if they cannot cope with the financial claims that their constituents make on them. In general, it appears that social protection does not transform the relationships between MPs and their constituents.
In short, there is little evidence that the expansion of social protection has had positive feedback effects on politicians, generating more enthusiasm for further expansion. Of course, the feedback loops that render the expansion of social protection irreversible operate primarily via citizens or voters: politicians’ political survival might depend on re-election or at least on a measure of popular legitimacy. What evidence exists on the effects – whether positive or negative – on public opinion?
It has long been assumed that social protection does (or can) have feedback effects on citizens. Social protection may be ‘transformative’ (Devereux and Sabates-Wheeler 2004) insofar as it empowers beneficiaries, especially women, to organise and mobilise for wider changes in society and policy, perhaps because they come to perceive benefits as rights. Conversely, fiscal conservatives have long worried that any expansion of social protection is the ‘thin edge of the wedge’, in that minor expansions simply encourage people to demand further expansion.
Research on public opinion suggests a widespread ambivalence about paying grants to working-age adults. South African data demonstrate a clear hierarchy of perceived deservingness. In contrast to the very strong popular support for old-age pensions (which have a long history) and for children, there is only weak support for paying grants to working-age adults (Seekings 2022; Dawson and Fouksman 2020). Schüring (2011) found a preference for conditionality among both urban and rural populations in Zambia, especially among better-educated and better-off people. More recently, Pruce (2023) finds that Zambians have insisted that social grants be targeted on households without members who could work. Opalo (2021) found that, in Kenya, orphans and persons with disabilities were seen as most deserving, with older persons trailing behind. Although poverty was attributed primarily to a lack of jobs, few people regarded the unemployed as deserving of grants (see also, on Ghana, Yeboah et al. 2016).
If the expansion of social protection had strong feedback effects on citizens, this might be reflected in the attitudes or behaviour of citizens as voters – which would in turn shape the ways that politicians understood their political interests. The evidence on social protection and elections in Africa is inconclusive. In Botswana, the ruling Botswana Democratic Party consolidated its support, especially in rural areas, in part through the public provision of drought relief and social protection along with other public services (Seekings 2019a). But social protection has rarely been a prominent issue in elections. In South Africa, there is only weak evidence that social grants have paid electoral benefits to the ruling African National Congress (ANC), which presided over their expansion after 1994. Survey data does not suggest that either gratitude among beneficiaries or backlash among conservative voters has had any effect on voting behaviour, although there may be some anxiety among beneficiaries over the possibility that opposition parties would end the grants (Patel et al. 2014; Seekings 2019b). South African voters’ priorities are job creation, security, and corruption, not social protection. In Malawi, the accidentally incumbent president’s attempt to brand herself as the champion of social protection did not prevent a dismal performance in the 2014 election; most Malawian voters saw themselves as farmers and prioritised agricultural subsidies (Hamer and Seekings 2019).
Overall, social protection might be a significant element in parties’ or candidates’ efforts to brand themselves in ways that appeal to particular groups of voters, especially poor voters, but politicians seem to be wary of over-emphasising social protection in their campaigns, perhaps because they fear that doing so might undermine support among voters who have misgivings about the expansion of social protection. It is not clear that the expansion of social protection has had substantial positive feedback effects on the preferences of either beneficiaries or other citizens.
The future politics of social protection might diverge from past politics as a result of either structural changes in the economy or society (such as urbanisation) or new or more severe shocks (whether ecological, economic, or medical) or general shifts in politics in the region (such as the weakening or strengthening of democratic governance). Some of these can be anticipated, others not.
Demographic trends are most easily predicted. Africa’s population passed 1 billion in 2009 and is expected to pass 2 billion in the late 2030s and 3 billion in the 2060s. The number of people who are too young or too old to work will grow everywhere – and the age composition of the population will shift in some countries. The number of people aged 60 and above passed 50 million in 2010. This number is expected to rise to 100 million by 2030, 200 million by 2050, and 400 million by 2070 (UN 2022). In some countries, the dependency ratio will not change much. In others, undergoing a more pronounced demographic transition, the proportion of elderly people will rise and the proportion of children will begin to fall.
The rising number of elderly people across much of Africa poses particular challenges. Fewer and fewer elderly people will have any access to agricultural land which they could use, if physically able, to support themselves. Kin are less and less able or willing, despite traditional norms, to provide the necessary support and care for the elderly. In the case of Rwanda, Sabates-Wheeler et al. (2020: 350) estimate that almost no older people will be able to support themselves from their land or be supported adequately by kin by 2045. The African Union’s revised (2022) Policy Framework and Plan of Action on Ageing (African Union 2022) reiterates its strong emphasis on family and community but points also to the need for expanded social protection, including pensions and even long-term care outside or beyond the family. But the ILO (2021) estimates that only 27 per cent of older people in Africa receive any kind of pension.
It is not clear whether or how this need for expanded public provision will translate into political pressure. Whilst the elderly are not a significant voting block, pensions are important also for their working-age adult children in that pensions would relieve them of some of the responsibilities to their elderly parents and they themselves might look forward to pensions in their old age. Respect for the elderly is also widespread, as a norm if not a practice. Hitherto, however, this has rarely provided a sufficiently strong incentive for politicians to brand themselves as champions of the elderly and to prioritise social pensions over other public expenditure.
Demographic trends will make it very difficult – probably impossible – to reduce the absolute number of people living below standard poverty lines and will make it difficult even to reduce the poverty rate. The absolute number of people living in extreme income poverty in Africa actually rose between 1990 and 2015, despite economic growth, because too few of the benefits of growth trickled down to the poor. Without major structural economic reforms, unemployment is likely to rise, especially in towns where young men and women migrate. Ferguson (2015) suggests that the future is likely to be work-less for many even if there are structural economic reforms, because of the environmental constraints on production which (Ferguson argues) will require governments, citizens, and scholars to rethink social protection.
Population growth combines with social and economic changes to frame the need for social protection, as the case of the elderly illustrates. Urbanisation – which is expected to grow the urban population from about 36 per cent of the total in 2010 to 60 per cent by 2050 (African Development Bank Group 2012) – is driven by the expectation that there are better economic conditions and opportunities in urban than in rural areas (OECD, UNECA and AfDB 2022). Across much of Africa, informal employment provides a crucial safety net of opportunity for the urban poor. But urban poverty and vulnerability will nonetheless surely become more prevalent. Whilst this might push governments to use social protection to appease the urban poor, it is more likely that governments will opt for ‘forbearance’ – i.e. exempting the urban poor from taxes and costly regulation – rather than public provision (as Holland (2017) argues has been the case in Latin America). Responses to the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns suggested that the urbanisation of social protection in Africa had stalled (Gronbach and Seekings 2021).
In addition to chronic pressures, urban and rural populations will remain vulnerable to ‘natural’ shocks (drought and floods), medical shocks (pandemics such as Covid-19), and economic shocks (due to global or national economic downturns). Climate change is likely to exacerbate these, dropping tens of millions of people into poverty, primarily through its effects on health and on food prices (Jafino et al. 2020). Public policies – including through ‘adaptive’, ‘shock-responsive’, or ‘shock-sensitive’ social protection – can mitigate this. The case of Malawi suggests that we should not expect dramatic shifts in government policy. Calls for shock-responsive (or sensitive) social protection (‘3SP’) (Holmes et al. 2017) are reflected in the government’s strategic documents (presumably written by consultants) but MPs rarely discuss these, and there appears to be little enthusiasm for implementing them (Haworth 2020).
The Covid-19 pandemic forcefully demonstrated that pandemics can have massive social and economic effects, even when the direct effects on health were modest across much of the continent. The first Africa-wide recession in a generation was especially severe on the urban poor, i.e. a sector that has generally been neglected hitherto in the design of national social protection systems. In response, most African governments announced emergency measures (Gentilini et al. 2022). But many of these were implemented slowly if at all (Beazley, Bischler and Doyle 2021), and many of the ‘success stories’ were modest or short-lived (Gentilini 2023). Whilst there are exceptions (most notably in South Africa), the pandemic did not prompt any clear overall shift in the pathways of social protection reform in Africa. The introduction of a major new programme in South Africa was exceptional – and even this was and remains a formally temporary measure (Gronbach, Seekings and Megannon 2022). Framing programmes as responses to an emergency reduces the political costs of terminating them once the immediate emergency is over.
The evidence from the recent past suggests that exogenous changes and shocks, whether from climate change or pandemics, are unlikely to prompt dramatic shifts in the politics of social protection in Africa. International organisations may lobby more forcefully for their preferred models of social protection (and may even overcome their differences and speak with one voice). But it is not clear that they will exert much more influence than hitherto. Those international organisations that focus on populations that are unable to work – notably, the elderly (HelpAge International) and children (UNICEF) – are likely to continue to run up against the strong preference across Africa for developmental interventions to expand production and reduce food insecurity. Even in urban areas, developmental initiatives are likely to be prioritised over social protection. The World Bank’s emphasis on the developmental benefits of social protection is likely to remain more appealing to governments than the ILO’s emphasis on individual rights to social protection.
Neither endogenous nor exogenous changes are likely to result in significant and general shifts in the politics of social protection. It is not clear that the expansion of social protection hitherto has created powerful vested interests among bureaucrats or politicians. Citizens themselves (at least outside of South Africa) have been slow to see benefits as rights or entitlements rather than charity. Preferences over social protection have rarely if ever had a major effect on voting behaviour and election outcomes. The history of natural disasters has encouraged the expansion of social protection, but an awareness of climate change seems to lead to renewed commitment to agricultural and developmental initiatives rather than social protection. The Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdowns promoted a flurry of announcements of expanded social protection, but implementation lagged behind and many programmes were quickly terminated. Development – and job creation, in countries with high unemployment – continues to be a much higher political priority than social protection.
Political contestation over social protection is likely therefore to focus on two issues. First, will international organisations and their local allies succeed in persuading more governments to assume more financial responsibility for social protection? This will surely depend on the strength of the local partners in the transnational policy coalition (as Lavers and Hickey 2021, emphasise) and on the preferences of the governing party and president. In few Southern African countries (except perhaps for South Africa) is there much evidence of strong local actors in support of the prioritisation of social protection over other areas of public expenditure, with their own supportive policy coalitions.
The unknown in this are the political implications of the rapid growth of urban poor populations. To what extent will these populations, through either their electoral power or extra-electoral (i.e. street) power, strengthen the hand of developmentalists pushing for job creation and more economic opportunities? The experience of the Covid-19 pandemic suggests that we should not anticipate any dramatic expansion of social protection.
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Copyright © 2024 The Authors. IDS Bulletin © Institute of Development Studies | DOI: 10.19088/1968-2024.121
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited, any modifications or adaptations are indicated, and the work is not used for commercial purposes.
The IDS Bulletin is published by Institute of Development Studies, Library Road, Brighton, BN1 9RE, UK. This article is part of IDS Bulletin Vol. 55 No. 2 October 2024 ‘Reimagining Social Protection’; the Introduction is also recommended reading.