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Abstract
Although social protection (SP) is of the utmost importance in Africa, current debates are often overly simplistic, with a risk for SP to be added to the long list of "rapidly emerging-rapidly dismissed" development ideas. Indeed, real-world constraints and dilemmas faced by policy-makers should be faced more explicitly, including countries' different levels of capacities to institutionalise SP systems. Going beyond ‘agendas' and approaching SP in a more balanced way, where both opportunities and limitations are appropriately gauged in a context-specific fashion, may be an important step towards making SP better suited and more relevant to those who need it most.

This Comment, inspired by Karen Tibbo's Comment, The role of INGOs in the new social protection agenda in Africa, lays out some issues on social protection (SP) that I have been thinking about for some time and highlights some challenges that I believe debates on SP in Africa should consider more explicitly.

In general, this Comment certainly does not make a case against SP. On the contrary, it makes a case for it and argues that while there is a risk that SP may be added to the long list of "rapidly emerging-rapidly dismissed" development ideas, such risk could be reduced through a slight change in the approach towards SP itself. Let me explain this a bit further.

Tibbo's Comment sets out very clearly a number of compelling issues to the SP debate. Of course, it would be hard to disagree with the message that governments should be the drivers of SP policies and programmes. I also fully concur with the observation that SP is not a new concept per se, but that at the same time there are innovative nuances that make it somehow different from past debates. I likewise share the view that the variety of approaches to SP makes the playing field "undefined and dynamic", hence posing challenges on how to develop policy directions. In other words, Tibbo's Comment is a valuable contribution in mapping out options and modalities for INGOs to engage in SP.

However, although my views do not differ very much on technical issues, they do differ on the overall approach and message the Comment conveys. Tibbo rightly mentions the challenges for INGOs to influence broader national policy debates (p.3), but it's unclear if the skills required to face such challenges would explicitly serve for providing unbiased advice to governments, or just for better advocacy, or perhaps for both. The Comment does not seem to emphasise strongly enough what I expected to be a major role that INGOs could play in the SP domain, namely, providing constructive criticism to help shape the debate around SP. In essence, Tibbo argues that INGOs should help in consolidating the SP 'agenda' at all levels, without really questioning some key issues underpinning the way SP is currently approached in Africa.

The Comment refers to an 'agenda' right from the title, but such a word has a pre-packaged flavour that may prevent SP from being fully convincing to some observers. The Comment itself acknowledges that "governments are outside of the main debate [and]… the main drivers of policy development are donors (p.3 and 6)", a view also shared by other authors¹ and raising concernes on whether SP is geneuinely demand-led.

Such considerations speak directly to the way SP policies are nurtured within a country. Indeed, SP debates are often framed around building evidence to "convince" policy-makers, rather than understanding more deeply the binding constraints that prevent the poorest and lowest-capacity² countries from rapidly introducing and scaling-up formal SP systems.

Those countries are obviously those that need SP most, but are also those facing substantial trade-offs between meeting widespread short-term needs and making long-term investments (the so-called catch-22 of SP). Nonetheless, governments are often advised to institutionalise bold long-term SP commitments against, on one hand, short-term donor commitments and, on the other hand, limited possibilities to finance SP with national resources in the medium-term. These are uneasy dilemmas that policy-makers in many African governments face.

For instance, the experience of middle and higher-income countries shows that there were different pathways of introducing formal SP systems, and that those pathways were all but linear. Overall, however, such national processes were gradual and generally consistent with, among other factors, the level of growth that countries could generate over time³. Subsequently, the fact that some of the poorest countries in Africa would introduce SP systems with a different sequence and modality - i.e. before (rather than after) sustained growth and capacities, and mostly with external (rather than domestic) funding - may not necessarily lead to the same results in the longer-term, and may deserve further attention.

In other words, the current SP 'agenda' in Africa often lacks a context-specific approach, and in particular of an approach that explicitly recognises those issues and countries' different levels of capacities to institutionalise SP systems. Debating SP in low-capacity, post-war countries that do not have any formal social protection systems in place (e.g. Sudan) is considerably different from debating it in contexts where elements of social protection programmes are present, although often uncoordinated, short-term in duration, and limited in scale (e.g. Malawi). Such models further differ, for example, from countries that have institutionalised and domestically tax base-financed social protection system (e.g. some Central and Latin American countries), where challenges are mostly in filling gaps and making the system work more efficiently.

Lessons from one context could to some extent inform developments in others, but they should be carefully interpreted and caveats clearly spelled out⁴. Therefore, a standard approach to SP that doesn't take into account the variety of circumstances and capacities on the ground may fail to calibrate objectives and expectations about what SP can realistically achieve.

Taken together, these considerations suggest that the current debate on SP in Africa often tends to be overly simplistic, and thereby not always convincing in providing new insights on how to deal with contemporary dilemmas at the interface of humanitarian and development work. Predictable and multi-annual support, coordination and rationalisation of assistance, rights, and insurance measures for example are all good things, but they could hardly be defined as new ideas. Nor are they addressed in new and innovative ways (maybe with the exception of index-based risk transfer products).

Moreover, the variety of objectives that SP is meant to pursue - including inter alia assisting the elderly and sick, providing incentives to small farmers, smoothing consumption, reducing inequalities, regulating labour markets, facilitating access to services, and reducing disaster-related risks - makes the concept overstretched. This doesn't mean that a consistent approach cannot be found, but it does suggest that more caution and analytical scrutiny is needed before placing all those objectives under an undefined SP umbrella, and applying them equally to different contexts.

INGOs are the best judgers in identifying their role in the SP domain, but if that role will be more on the advocacy, facilitation or advice side - as Tibbo's Comment seems to suggest - than perhaps INGOs could play a much more prominent role by, for example, appraising context-specific capacities; advising on the costs, benefits, and trade-offs of different interventions; and ensuring that SP is genuinely demand-driven and springing from the bottom-up, rather than seeking endorsement by policy-makers on predefined 'agendas'.

The debate on SP in Africa is unfolding rapidly. The concept presents sizeable opportunities, but also considerable limitations. Approaching SP in a more balanced and flexible way, where both opportunities and limitations are appropriately gauged in a context-specific fashion, may be an important step toward making SP better suited and more relevant to those who need it most.

Footnotes:

1. See for example Chinsinga B. (2007) "The Social Protection Policy in Malawi: Processes, Politics and Challenges". Future Agricultures Working Paper. University of Malawi: Zomba; Devereux S. and P. White (2007) "Pilots, Principles or Patronage: What Makes Social Protection Succeed in Southern Africa", paper prepared for the workshop 'Social Protection and Ideologies of Welfare in Southern Africa' (6 December, University of Oxford).
2. National capacities are here generally defined as the institutional, financial and technical ability of a country to adequately provide assistance to people in need.
3. See for example Lindert P. (2005) "Growing Public: Social Spending and Economic Growth Since the Eighteenth Century". Cambridge University Press: New York.; Timmer P. (2008) "The Structural Transformation and the Changing Role of Agriculture in Economic Development: Empirics and Implications", Stanford University.
4. See among others Ravallion M. (2008) "Are There Lessons for Africa from China's Success Against Poverty?" Policy Research Working Paper No.4463. World Bank: Washington DC.