Politics of Social Protection: The Visible, Invisible and Ignored Citizens

Most social protection programmes express the state’s commitment to human and social rights. The allocation of social protection as a public good attracts political and public interest due to its encompassing nature. Both the vulnerable and the non-vulnerable require social protection despite the varying access and equity differences. This calls for interrogation and understanding of how social protection is accessed and distributed and the politics surrounding the process. This chapter explores three aspects of social protection: those whose need for social protection is recognised and protected (the visible); those whose need for social protection is not recognised nor protected (the invisible) and those whose need for social protection is recognised but not protected (the ignored). This typology allows us to ask the question of who falls into which category and why. These are explicitly political questions, which this chapter seeks to highlight. Like many others, Eastern African countries are far from achieving the 5 per cent target, but most are implementing various programmes on social protection. We analyse the politics of social protection in the three most populous Eastern African countries-Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania-to illustrate the identified categories of social protection policies.