IDCPPA Research Seminar - 05 March 2026 - Anna Wolkenhauer - Expanding Welfare in the Midst of the Polycrisis: conceptualising the institutionalisation of social protection based on a case study of Zambia

IDCPPA Research Seminar on

Thursday, 5 March 2025, 15:00 – 16:30 SAST.
CSSR Seminar Room 4.29
Robert Leslie Social Sciences Building
University of Cape Town

Expanding Welfare in the Midst of the Polycrisis: conceptualising the institutionalisation of social protection based on a case study of Zambia

Abstract

Current debates about social protection in Africa focus on the question how institutionalised programmes, which often emerged as small, donor-funded interventions in the early 2000s, have become twenty years on. In several countries, including Zambia, programmes like cash transfers have obviously grown in reach and scale; whether they can be considered institutionalised is another question. Usually conceptualised as juridification, survival across different ruling parties, or simply the continuous expansion, our understanding of institutionalisation requires more empirical and theoretical nuance. Based on recent research in Zambia, I present several aspects of what I consider steps towards institutionalisation of social protection – growing reach and awareness, consolidated bureaucratic structures, expanded visions, and deepened learning – to argue that institutionalisation is a long-term process of state formation that goes beyond political buy-in by leaders or the guarantee of social rights.

Bio

Anna Wolkenhauer is a DAAD-lecturer in Development Studies at the Institute for Social Development at the University of the Western Cape and associated researcher at the Institute for Intercultural and International Studies at the University of Bremen. Her first book is about social policy and state formation in Zambia, with more recent work around rural development and agriculture in Botswana.