The twentieth century is the century of wage labour in Africa. This is true even though agriculture remained a major employment sector for Africans and forced and unfree labour persisted. Although free wage labour, as a category of labour relations, only included small numbers of Africans, it signified that the capitalist mode of production had taken root in the continent; moreover, this trend continued to grow on an unprecedented scale. This presentation is about wage labour and the historical development of social welfare in Africa up to the present. The paper analysis how different African realities, different countries came to terms with the demands by wage workers for more welfare. Methodologically, this presentation will seek to make a comparative analysis between Europe (where the welfare state originated) and Africa, as well as between different African welfare systems. The reasoning behind this approach is to try and define what “welfare state” means in different contexts and to identify different welfare “traditions” in Africa.
A historical analysis of the welfare state in Africa, from colonialism to neoliberalism, requires consideration of how this social question was addressed in authoritarian and democratic regimes, as well as in socialist and in capitalist societies.
To look at welfare and well-being means also to look at the structure of social life, e.g. differences that exist between rural and urban societies. We can see how, for example, the idea of welfare and social reproduction changed from colonial times to the post-colonial period, from the domain of the rural and the traditional to that of the state and the nation.
As explained by Frederick Cooper, the issue of social welfare had been brought to the attention of colonial administrators since before WWII by the many different social and political movements in Africa. Post-WWII developmentalism dealt profoundly with the question of social welfare. Within independent African states, therefore, social welfare became a highly-debated policy matter. Governments also used welfare provisions to attract workers’ political backing. This is more true in cases where labour organisations existed and were actively participating the political life of a state.
The relationship between trade unionism and welfare is a particularly interesting one. Trade unions were, on the one hand, staunch supporters of welfare state measures, however, on the other hand, measures advocated by the unions generally only benefitted a section of workers: the unionised, the skilled, the formal, etc. Masses of precarious, informal and manual workers were often not beneficiaries of welfare measures. Therefore, the question arises: did this partial application of welfare state provisions help to reinforce the idea of a “labour aristocracy in the making” in Africa, as Giovanni Arrighi and others have put it? Maybe yes, but perhaps the real question to ask is why social welfare cannot be extended to all workers in many African countries. This brings us to the final element discussed in this presentation: the relationship between the welfare state in Africa and the economic packages provided by international financial institutions as opposed to the Keynesian ideas that welfare is indeed a pre-condition for economic growth.