Paper short abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic has turbo-charged a contradictory digital social protection agenda for African informal economies. Tensions between the social welfare case and the business case for digital social protection reveal shifts in the incorporation of informal workers in circuits of accumulation.

Paper long abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a new light on informality and social protection, particularly in the African context. The COVID gaze has turbo-charged a new social protection agenda that has reframed African informal economies from a pool of surplus labour to vulnerable essential workers in urgent need of social protection. Given evidence of the surprising resilience of Africa's informalized societies to COVID-19, this paper will focus in on two perplexing aspects of the more caring approach to informality. First, the reframing of African informal labour as essential workers focuses more on social protection than employment needs. The changing role of social reproduction in contemporary capitalism will be used to trace of a shift from productivist to financialized modes of incorporation of informal labour in contemporary circuits of accumulation. Secondly, the inappropriateness of digital cash transfer systems to the needs of African informal workers will be examined. Given the infrastructural and capacity challenges faced by informal workers and the areas where they live, questions will be raised about whose needs are served by the rush to digital cash transfer systems in response to the pandemic. Drawing attention to the limited benefits of digital social protection systems for reaching African informal workers, this paper will reflect on the tensions between the social welfare case and the business case for digital social protection systems, with a focus on whether caring capitalism offers a path for transforming rather than profiting from precarity.