Despite the odds: assessing Africa’s new social welfare landscape

Over the past decades more attention has been given to the growth of social welfare related programs in sub-Saharan Africa. However, to date there are still insufficient empirical observations, which makes it difficult to assess these changes or the factors behind them. This article introduces the Structure of Social Welfare (SSWA) dataset. Rather than rely on spending data, which is sporadically reported, the SSWA gathers data on the design elements of diverse social welfare programs for 44 African countries between 1960 and 2022. These data are used to create indexes of social welfare that take into consideration intended coverage as well as institutional and fiscal sustainability. The SSWA data demonstrates that despite difficult material conditions there is considerably more social welfare in Africa today, but that there is also important variation across countries in terms of the level of commitment. The utility of the SSWA data is then demonstrated by reevaluating the contested impact of democratization on welfare expansion in Africa. The results indicate a positive yet underexplored relationship.