- Summary:
- Background and Rationale:
Since the 2000s, there has been a redeployment of social protection systems in Sub-Saharan Africa following the objectives of international aid related to health (universal health coverage, WHO 2013) and work (universal social protection floors, ILO, 2021). More broadly, the Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2015) have made social protection a target of several objectives (particularly regarding poverty, nutrition, health, work, inequalities), leading Merrien (2013) to speak of a reconfiguration of international aid through the lens of social protection. While the social protection systems of African countries are generally described as exogenous, that is, conceived from the outside, by colonial powers first and then by international institutions, what about the transformations currently underway? Do the emerging systems remain exogenous, or is there a process of endogenization or national appropriation taking place? What national social protection policies are being implemented and what effects do they have on the populations?
- Objective:
To analyze the contemporary evolution of social protection systems in African states. On one hand, it will involve establishing a comparative framework of social protection systems at the national and local levels, from which a typology can be constructed. On the other hand, an interdisciplinary inquiry into innovative forms of protection against social risks will be developed, anchored in the relation to norms.
- Main Methods:
The typology of social protection systems at the national and local level will rely on existing databases such as the Social Assistance, Politics, and Institutions database (UNU-WIDER) or the World Social Protection Data Dashboards (ILO), and can be supplemented by a collection of macroeconomic data. Identification and analysis of relevant literature at the international and country levels will be conducted to build a conceptual and methodological framework that allows for the identification of different types of social protection systems using the tools of multidimensional statistics. A challenge will lie in the ability of the typology to analyze the historical trajectories of social protection in African states.
A critical analysis of existing household and employment surveys will be conducted to observe how mechanisms of protection against social risks are measured and identified in the African context. Part of the postdoctoral work will consist of exploring the conceptual framework, methods, and databases produced in the context of the Protect research project to see how they can be adapted for the international comparison of international protection systems in Africa. The aim will be to see if and how the modules dedicated to social protection (safety nets, cash transfers and redistributive pressure, shocks and strategies implemented, informality and quality of employment) in existing surveys can be usefully complemented. Particular interest will be paid to whether the analysis of ego-centered networks, through the establishment of a bimodal name generator to identify innovative interpersonal and organizational protection mechanisms against social shocks, can be extended to other national and local contexts than the regions of Madagascar studied in Protect.
