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RETHINKING THE SOCIAL PROTECTION PARADIGM: SOCIAL POLICY IN

AFRICAS DEVELOPMENT Group 3

From 1981 to 2005, Sub Saharan Africa has had difficulties with its social development. Thisis seen in a move from a wider to a narrower vision of social policy, with cash transfers

dominating policy choice. This is referred to as the social protection paradigm. The paradigm

has been funded aggressively by European donors who claim that the paradigms policy

instruments are efficient. Instead, this paper looks at a broader approach to social policy that

is more adequately suited to Africa. This broader approach is known as Transformative Social

Policy. This policy has major roles such as redistribution, protection, reproduction, and social

cohesion. The narrow approach to social policy is stated to be as close as one can come to a

magic bullet in development. Cash transfers are said to be a policy of choice among donors

because they are supposedly market compliant, efficient in resource allocation, targeting, and

well suited to budget support programmes. These donors are specifically non-governmental

organizations, international non-governmental organizations, and a variety of consultants.

This type of social policy protection has an underlying intention of trying to spread their

influence into Africa. However, the narrow policy has proved to be ineffective as between

1981 and 2005 approximately 176.1million people lived in poverty and 1.4-2.8 million new

cases of child mortality had been established. Apart from this, there are other problems with

this policy, such as the nature of policy transfers and learning and incompatibility between

social and economic policy. There is also a preference for targeting the poorest of the poor

and even those below the poverty line, regardless of how poor they are may be overlooked.

Successful social protection policies on the other hand are grounded in the norms of equality

and solidarity. Social policy refers specifically to collective public efforts aimed at affecting

and protecting the social well-being of people within a given territory. Economic policy

refers specifically to public efforts directed at the functioning of the economy through the

use of fiscal and monetary instruments. The broad approach to social protection policy aims

to link social and economic policy by using fiscal policy as a force behind social policy. In

1987, the Social Dimensions of Adjustment programme was launched to address the failures

of the previous social protection paradigm policy or narrow policy. This adjustment

programme was however unsuccessful as it led to economic contractions, and severe and

wide spread entitlement failures. There therefore was little evidence of this policys success

in poverty alleviation. A social risk management programme was implemented by the World

Bank with two primary social objectives. The first of these was the provision of support to

the critically poor and the second being a mechanism of targeting the critically poor. The

transformative social protection programme was then introduced as an alternative to the SRM

model. This policy differed from SRM model on three main levels. The first of these levels

was problem identification, the second, problem prioritization and the third, social protection

providers. These were suggested because the SRM model had an excessive focus on the

socially vulnerable and its refusal to engage with economic policy. The World Bank often

cites a number of pilot cases such as Ethiopia and Zambia as success stories in alleviatingpoverty. This evidence must however be questioned. While more evidence has been published

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in support of the positive impact of cash transfers, publication has been made by the donor

organizations themselves in a bid to present their policies as feasible and efficient. Some of

the supporting evidence of policy success that was provided by the donors for example

included an increase in chicken ownership amongst the poor. Although there was an increase

in chicken ownership, one has to question whether this is a pertinent factor contributing topoverty alleviation. An illustrative example how ineffective the narrow policy approach is, is

seen in the case of Ghana where the most critically poor are those that are employed in

agriculture but the donor organizations providing cash transfers to the countries stated that

they didnt have expertise in helping Ghana in agriculture and therefore stated that they

needed to source other organizations for funding as a result thereof.

The main problem with paradigms is not so much that they shift, but rather that they serve as

blinkers. The most affective social protection mechanism in a developing country must

combine economic development with major advances in social and political developments.

Education for example is a good social issue linked to growth which is often ignored in socialprotection programmes. The return to a wider vision of social policy is the best move at

building socially inclusive developmental agendas. Social policy in essence is not about

public goods but rather about a collective common good. A successful social policy regime

should acknowledge the importance of policy space and successful financing mechanisms,

which are both local and diverse in nature.

In conclusion, whereas the first decade of structural adjustment lead to wide spread failure,

inequality and worsening of economic volatility, new social agenda needs to be conducted

which entails a wider division of development.