Paper short abstract:

Ideologies underlying a country’s social and economic policies determine the different tasks assigned to a country’s social policies with implications on the transformation of economies and sustainably financing welfare expenditure. South Africa, Zambia and Mauritius will be used to argue the case.

Paper long abstract:

Social policy in the Global South has often been conflated with social protection with implications on the role and how to finance social policy. Yet the most redistributive regimes of North Europe have tended to be the most conscious of the productive role of social policy significantly reducing poverty, inequality and vulnerability. By embedding skills and training regimes in the much larger welfare policy concerns close to full employment make it to easier sustainably finance welfare expenditure. Using a transformative social policy framework and with reference to Mauritius, South Africa and Zambia which are part of the Anglophone Southern Africa Gender Equitable and Transformative Social Policy in post-COVID-19 Africa (GETSPA) project, the papers seek answers to the following pertinent questions: How has Mauritius, located in the Global South, sustainably maintained a universal welfare state characterised by universal entitlements to social and welfare benefits? What role and secret lies in Mauritius’s deployment of its social policy in the country’s rapid transitioning from a largely agrarian economy in the early 1970’s into manufacturing and subsequently service sector and welfare financing mechanisms? Why is South Africa’s Skills Development SETAs policy faltering as a welfare production regime strategy with 47 per cent of the population reliant on government provided social grants? What lesson can copper-reliant and donor-driven social protection Zambia draws from Mauritian and South Africa’s welfare production regimes and social policy financing? Emerging evidence suggests the importance of holding in tandem social and economic policy to sustainably finance welfare expenditure.