Appropriating the Colonial State: The Emergence of Social Insurance in Tunisia and Uganda

Abstract

In most African countries, social insurance has played a limited role in ensuring social protection for the wider populace. Based on a most-dissimilar case comparison of Tunisia and Uganda, we argue that the segmented and exclusive social insurance systems go back to colonial social policies. Original colonial pension schemes emerged via imperial staffing, the employment of “indigenous” public service and military personnel. With decolonisation, the appropriation of colonial structures and policies perpetuated the segmented feature of social insurance. Its expansion into the private sector after independence was mediated by two context-specific mechanisms: labour incorporation in more industrialised economies led to broader social insurance coverage, which could not be realised via insurance funds in the logic of top-down public resource accumulation.