When Policies Notice but Don’t Nurture: The Missing Link in Social Protection?

The Quiet Strength of Informal Protection

In my last reflection about my grandmother’s enduring reliance on mutual aid in her village, I explored the quiet strength of informal social protection—the subtle yet powerful networks of neighbours, churches, and extended families. These systems are intuitive and deeply human, quietly supporting individuals and communities long before formal social safety nets step in. I talked about cultural underpinnings such as Ubuntu and religious practices like Zakat and asked whether we should not more intentionally be bridging informal and formal social protection.

Since then, in conversations with a growing community of experts interested in this topic, a new question emerged: how do African social protection policies view these informal and traditional systems? Are they acknowledged, nurtured—or overlooked?

Angola: A starting point

Still thinking about my grandmother’s village, I began with Angola’s 2021 National Social Action Policy. Angola, emerging from decades of conflict and inheriting a patchwork of humanitarian-style interventions for decades, has only recently begun building formal systems of social protection. Its policy speaks movingly of solidariedade social—social solidarity—and calls for the mobilization of community organizations, cooperatives, and volunteer groups to extend support.

At first glance, it feels encouraging. Partnerships with civil society are encouraged; private actors are invited to bolster community wellbeing. Yet, looking closer, I couldn’t find a place for the kind of informal, everyday support systems that my grandmother relies on. No mention of mutual aid groups with no formal registration. No pathways for neighbours simply helping neighbours.

In her village, national life-cycle-based programmes remain firmly out of reach. Without an NGO, a cooperative, or a formal partner, communities like hers (and, really, in most of rural and peri-urban Angola) risk staying invisible. And that made me wonder—is this tension between recognizing solidarity and operationalizing it playing out across the continent?

Policy Shifts Over Time: Kenya

Kenya, long seen as a pioneer in African social protection, tells another story.

In 2011, its National Social Protection Policy proudly recognized the importance of traditional solidarity networks and self-help groups—over 300,000 of them nationally—as vital layers of protection. It was a broad, generous view, seeing resilience not only in government programs but in communities themselves.

Yet by 2023, in the newest policy, all mention of these systems had vanished. It’s tempting to see this as neglect or that Kenya no longer values these networks, that seems unlikely. Perhaps, as Kenya moves toward a rights-based, state-led model of protection, it focuses on what it can legally guarantee, leaving informal systems to be addressed in other policy frameworks, such as for Cooperatives (the 2021 version, recognises SACCOs, self-help groups and mutual associations) and other social development and informal sector policies and strategies.

Still, it is striking that the critical role these traditional and community-based networks continue to play in reducing vulnerability and building resilience could slip out of view so easily.

A Broader Lens: Remembering Early Hopes

Looking back, this narrowing wasn’t inevitable. In the early 2000s, as social assistance rapidly expanded across Africa with donor support, there were calls for a wider view.

A 2010 paper prepared for the European Report on Development reminded us that social protection should not belong exclusively to governments. Recipients should be seen as actors, not passive beneficiaries. And informal and market-based arrangements deserved careful attention alongside public schemes. A fascinating 2010 paper prepared for the European Report on Development (Brunori & O'Reilly, MPRA) reflected on this growth. It reminded us that while governments are central to social protection, actions are “not the exclusive prerogative of governments,” and that treating recipients as actors rather than passive beneficiaries preserves the empowering potential of social protection. A Social Risk Management approach also emphasized the value of informal and market-based arrangements in managing risks alongside public schemes.

Some early African policy frameworks reflected this spirit: Benin (2002), Zambia (2006), and Uganda (2010) acknowledged local actors and community networks. Mali (2003)  went further, speaking of cooperatives and social economies. Tanzania (2008) stood out, explicitly integrating traditional family and community support structures into its national framework.

Yet, over time, pragmatism—and perhaps donor influence—led to a narrower operational focus: public programs, formal systems, measurable entitlements. The Brunori & O’Reilly paper went on to recommend the EU to adopt a deliberately narrow and operational definition of social protection – focused on core actions rooted in formal public contributory and non-contributory programmes – rather than stretching the term to cover every possible form of social or economic inclusion and the myriads of initiatives and customs that help reduce vulnerability or strengthen community resilience.

The spirit of bridging old and new faded somewhat into the background.

Where We Stand Now

The UNDP’s 2019 State of Social Assistance in Africa reminds us that informal and mutual support mechanisms were, and still are, the primary sources of social protection across much of Africa. Reviewing its helpful annexes, a few national policies still carry echoes of that early recognition. Ethiopia (2012), Tanzania (2008), and Kenya (2011) once framed informal systems as active pillars of resilience. Others, like Chad, Mauritania and Niger, made broader but vaguer references. But increasingly, these acknowledgments feel rare and scattered.

Still, they haven’t vanished entirely. A friend and thought partner, Renata Nowak-Garmer (who helped author the UNDP report), has been helping map today’s terrain—and there are hopeful signs.

Ghana’s policy highlights the role of chieftaincy and traditional leaders. Liberia recognizes how extended kin networks often ensure survival. Rwanda encourages community participation as part of social protection. Sierra Leone formally includes osusu groups and labour exchanges. Zimbabwe identifies mutual societies and informal insurance groups as critical players.

These glimpses show that the memory—and sometimes the living practice—of community-based protection endures.

At the continental level, too, a reawakening is underway.

The African Union’s 2022 Protocol on Social Protection recognizes the virtues of African traditions, values, and practices of solidarity, urging States to strengthen both formal and informal mechanisms. Yet ratification remains slow – a reminder that aspirations on paper are not yet transformation on the ground (and hopefully not that cultural practices and traditions have become too fragmented to be considered “mainstream-able” in public policy).

Ethiopia: A Living Blueprint

If there’s one country that offers a glimpse of what integration could look like, it is Ethiopia.

Its 2016 National Social Protection Strategy does more than nod to informal systems. It actively partners with them.

The strategy recognizes iddirs—voluntary associations that mobilize resources for funerals and emergencies—as crucial pillars of resilience, with 87% of urban and 70% of rural households belonging to at least one. It doesn’t stop there. It proposes strengthening iddirs' traditional roles, offering training, and linking them to formal insurance products. Iqubs (rotating savings groups) and mahibers (religious friendship associations) are also part of Ethiopia’s vision.

Studies show that iddirs operate as highly effective informal insurance systems, offering timely financial support, low transaction costs, and strong community trust (Tafere, 2009), offering lessons for how traditional institutions can enhance national systems without losing their soul.

Formal social protection systems are crucial and must continue expanding. But carefully supporting informal networks could represent a high-return, low-cost investment to enhance system resilience and inclusion. Supporting informal systems meaningfully might also require stepping beyond social assistance policies.

Beyond Social Assistances Programmes and Mechanisms

Mechanisms like iddirs offer practical models that could be thoughtfully replicated or supported across Africa. Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLAs) are another major example. Across Africa, these groups pool savings, offer emergency loans, and provide basic financial security at the community level. These are already being actively embraced by UN agencies working on social protection such as UNICEF, WFP, FAO, and the ILO.  

Uganda’s Parish Development Model (PDM) launched in 2022, offers another example of formal systems attempting to build from the grassroots, mobilizing local Savings and Credit Cooperative Organizations (SACCOs) and informal groups to drive access to financial services, markets, and livelihood support.

Similarly, Rotating Credit and Savings Associations (ROSCAs)—known as susu in Ghana, chamas in Kenya, and tontines in West Africa—have long served as crucial coping and investment mechanisms for health expenses, school fees, funerals, and business start-ups. Research shows these traditions are deeply embedded in culture and tradition, and often act as informal social protection (Nation Africa, 2024, Stoesz et al 2016), yet without protective policies, they can be vulnerable to exploitation, fraud, or collapse.  

Beyond "Traditional" Social Assistance: Cooperatives, Financial Inclusion, Health, Government-CSO Partnerships

Effectively engaging with these systems – as we already reflected on in the case of Kenya – may require looking beyond core social assistance policies and programs. Cooperative laws, such as Rwanda’s Cooperative Policy, Kenya’s Cooperative Societies Act, and Ghana’s Cooperative Societies Law, offer important pathways for formalizing grassroots solidarity mechanisms.

However, the heavy formalization of these processes also carries risks—particularly for smaller, informal groups that may struggle to meet registration or compliance requirements. For example, Zimbabwe’s old “Private Voluntary Organizations Act” (as of 2007 and later amended) technically required registration of even small self-help groups, and non-compliance could lead to penalties – a hurdle that can push truly informal support underground (Human Rights Watch 2023). Thus, while cooperative laws and similar frameworks offer a route to formalize informal social protection, they must strike a balance so as not to crush the very spontaneity and low-cost nature that make informal systems effective.

Financial inclusion strategies, such as Tanzania’s National Financial Inclusion Framework 2023-2028, Ghana’s NFIDS 2018-2023, and Senegal’s NFIS 2022-2026, similarly seek to strengthen access to financial services for informal and rural communities, offering opportunities to bolster community resilience and informal protection mechanisms.

Health sector experiences offer both inspiration and caution: community health workers under the Uganda’s Village Health Teams Strategy, Malawi’s Community Health Strategy and Ghana’s Community Health Planning and Services (CHPS) play crucial frontline roles. They often fill critical gaps left by formal systems, providing entry points for complementary programming or links to social health insurance schemes like Ghana’s NHIS. These models illustrate the promise – but also the risks – of relying heavily on informal volunteerism from social protection-adjacent sectors without sustained investment in training, support, and accountability. As Avantee Bansal and I reflected in an earlier paper on the frontline workforce (and moves well beyond the health sector) in social protection, such reliance on unpaid, volunteer and paraprofessional labour risks undermining both equity and sustainable service quality if not carefully managed.

A more structured example (but cautionary, since its always an outlier in Africa) comes from South Africa. There, the Department of Social Development has funded thousands of community-based organizations (CBOs) to extend services to poor and rural areas (Rapoo, 2014). While this approach shows the potential for formal and informal systems to reinforce one another, it also exposes challenges: financial fragility, governance gaps, and the danger of community organizations becoming overly dependent on government funding – losing the flexibility and trust that once made them strong.

A Living Social Contract

All these reflections bring me back to my grandmother’s village. What protected her and millions like her wasn’t a programme, project or a handout. It was a living social contract: trust, proximity, and shared responsibility.

The future of social protection cannot be built by formal systems alone. It will depend on strengthening what already exists at the grassroots—without smothering it.

The broader legal and policy landscape shows both room for innovation – and need for caution. Well-designed support could amplify the resilience embedded in community systems; poorly designed formalization could unintentionally erode it.

It will depend on respecting local solutions, agile financing, and nurturing mutual responsibility between states and citizens.

And it will require a rethink of language itself.

As another friend, Daphne François, recently challenged me: are we framing the discussion in the right way? Maybe the real divide isn’t “formal” vs. “informal”, recognizing that for many Africans, what outsiders label "informal" often feels very formal and legitimate?

Maybe it’s "state-led" vs. "community-rooted."

And maybe, we need both.

Where to Next?

In my next post, I hope to dig more intentionally into this: What models might offer promising ways to bridge different systems respectfully? How might we rethink the language we use – and the partnerships we build – to sustain the deep social contracts that already exist, even if they don’t fit neatly into institutional frameworks?

I would love to hear your thoughts as I continue this journey. Where have you seen formal and community-rooted systems work effectively side-by-side? What promising approaches should we explore next?