The 'affordability' of new or expanded social protection programmes depends on more than an assessment of the fiscal costs or the poverty-reducing or developmental benefits. Diverse international organizations have shown that programmes costing less than or about 1 per cent of GDP have...

Botswana's welfare state is both a parsimonious laggard in comparison with some other middle-income countries in Africa (such as Mauritius and South Africa) and extensive (in comparison with its low-income neighbours to the north and east). Coverage is broad but cash transfers are modest. This...

Competitive elections in many parts of Africa generate powerful incentives to presidential candidates (and to a lesser extent political parties) to brand themselves in ways that transcend regional or ethnic loyalties. In Malawi, Joyce Banda - President from 2012 to 2014 - sought to distinguish...

Since the early 2000s international development agencies have actively promoted social protection as a new global public policy. This process can be understood as flowing from related shifts within the global political economy and of development ideology, and involved international development...

Social assistance programmes proliferated and expanded across much of the global South from the mid-1990s. Within Africa there has been enormous variation in this trend: some governments expanded coverage dramatically while others resisted this. The existing literature on social assistance, or...

This article examines some of the collective action problems which beset South African business in national and regional accords. The first part concludes that incomes policy type accords at national level are unlikely to be successful in South Africa. The main part of the article considers...

This article explores the nature and history of organized business in South Africa. It describes the major racial, sectoral and other fault-lines which fracture the business community, and indicates that many of these are the legacy of apartheid. It points out that the relationship between...