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. This is 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 alleviating poverty. This evidence must however be questioned. While more evidence has been published

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 to poverty 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 social protection 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.