Urban Social Protection in Africa

Working paper number:460
Author: Jeremy Seekings
Unit: CSSR

Abstract

Urban social protection regimes in Sub-Saharan Africa remain limited. This is the result of multiple factors: the recency and character of urbanization; political centralization in national government at the expense of urban government; the weaknesses of workers’ organisations; and the preferences of elites and ordinary citizens. Urban social protection regimes in most countries are characterised by low levels of public expenditure on both social insurance (explicable in part in terms of low rates of formal employment) and social assistance (in contrast to rural areas, where social assistance has expanded on the foundations of drought relief). In Africa, the ‘welfare state’ is in many ways less present in urban areas than in rural areas, despite the recent advocacy of reforms by international organisations including the World Bank and the International Labour Organisation. The economic crisis resulting from Covid-19, which affected urban areas especially, has prompted a limited urbanisation of social protection in the region, although this might prove to be transitory.

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