Social Protection Systems in Africa, International Comparisons

Examining the evolution of social protection systems in Africa against international aid goals on health, work, and poverty. This study delves into whether current changes remain externally influenced or show signs of local appropriation and impact.

Madagascar, Ethiopia, Morocco, Côte d'Ivoire

Axis: Social equity in the context of informality

Coordinating investigators:

– Claire Gondard, BSE (UMR CNRS 6060), Université de Bordeaux
– Francis-José N’guessan Coffie, Centre ivoirien de Recherche Economique et Sociale

Teams:

– BSE, University of Bordeaux
– Centre ivoirien de Recherche Economique et Sociale (CIRES), Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire

Status: Ongoing

Impact:

1 post-doctoral fellowship is associated to the project.
– Name of post-doctoral fellow: Damien Girollet

Background and rationale

Since the 2000s, we have ve seen the redeployment of social protection systems in Sub-Saharan Africa in the wake of international aid objectives concerning health (universal health coverage, WHO 2013) and work (universal social protection floors, ILO, 2021). More generally, the Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2015) make social protection a target of several goals (notably concerning poverty, nutrition, health, work, inequalities), leading Merrien (2013) to speak of a reconfiguration of international aid through the prism of social protection.
While social protection systems in African countries are generally described as exogenous, i.e. designed from the outside, first by the colonial powers and then by international institutions, what about the transformations underway in recent years? Are the systems being put in place still exogenous, or are we seeing a process of endogenization or national appropriation? What national social protection policies are being put in place, and what impact are they having on populations?

Objective

Analyze the contemporary evolution of social protection systems in African countries. On the one hand, the aim is to establish a comparative framework of social protection systems at national and local levels, from which a typology can be constructed. On the other hand, an interdisciplinary questioning of innovative forms of protection against social risks will be developed, anchored in the relationship with norms.

Methods

The typology of social protection systems at national and local level will be based on existing databases such as the Social Assistance, Politics, and Institutions database (UNI-WIDER) or the World Social Protection Data Dashboards (ILO), and may be supplemented by the collection of macroeconomic data. An identification and analysis of the relevant literature at international level and in the countries concerned will be carried out in order to build a conceptual and methodological framework for identifying different types of social protection systems using the tools of multidimensional statistics. One of the challenges will lie in the typology’s ability to analyze the historical trajectories of social protection in African countries.
A critical analysis of existing household and employment surveys will be carried out in order to observe how protection mechanisms against social risks are measured and identified in the African context. Part of the post-doctorate will involve exploring the conceptual framework, methods and databases produced as part of the Protect research project, to see how they can be adapted for international comparison of international protection systems in Africa. The aim will be to identify whether and how the modules dedicated to social protection (safety nets, remittances and redistributive pressure, shocks and strategies implemented, informality and job quality) in existing surveys can be usefully supplemented. Of particular interest will be whether egocentric network analysis, through the implementation of a bimodal name generator to identify innovative interpersonal and organizational mechanisms for protection in the face of social shocks, can be extended to other national and local contexts than the regions of Madagascar studied in Protect.

Progress

As part of the supervision of a master’s internship, a typology of social protection systems encompassing all African countries was developed, based on the conceptual framework of Wood & Gough (2006). Future research will focus more specifically on the emergence of institutional models for contributory health insurance mechanisms, particularly within the context of a GP Africa tutored project.
The analysis of local social protection systems carried out in Madagascar as part of the Protect project will be extended to Côte d’Ivoire. This extension will include an in-depth analysis of the interactions between informal risk-sharing and solidarity arrangements and the formal insurance mechanisms recently introduced in Côte d’Ivoire, such as Universal Health Coverage (Couverture Maladie Universelle).
To this end, a field survey will be conducted in 2025 in Côte d’Ivoire, combining a multiscalar approach with mixed methodologies. This survey aims to enrich the understanding of the interplay between informal and formal protection systems in the specific national and local context of Côte d’Ivoire.