The current Ethiopian government originated in a Marxist revolutionary movement, which early in its struggle against the Derg regime recognized the widespread discrimination against women in Ethiopian society and placed gender emancipation at the centre of its revolutionary strategy. While...

This paper examines the political economy of Rwanda's Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme, concluding that strong government commitment to the programme has been shaped by the specific characteristics of the political settlement that was established around 2000. For the Rwandan government, the...

Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme is among the largest social protection programmes in Africa and has been promoted as a model for the continent. This paper analyses the political drivers of the programme, arguing that elite commitment can be understood in the context of shifts within...

Social assistance programmes proliferated and expanded across much of the global South from the mid-1990s. Within Africa there has been enormous variation in this trend: some governments expanded coverage dramatically while others resisted this. The existing literature on social assistance, or...