Accounting for Social Policy: Reflections on Recent Developments in Sub-Saharan Africa (Draft)

An assessment of possible "new directions in social policy" in the African context broadly and "sub-Saharan Africa" more narrowly requires a starting point of diversity and variation in social policy architectures, the extent of the role of external actors in defining policy issues and shaping the policy landscape. In response to the question on the emergent new directions in social policy, in much of sub-Saharan Africa the most significant break is perhaps more with the pre-1980 social policy framework than a major rupture from the neoliberal policy regime that took root in the 1980s. Here, again, the diversity is important.

Jìmí O. Adésínà is Professor of Sociology at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, and Professorial Research Associate at the Nordic Africa Institute in Sweden.