This chapter focuses on the instrumental role of international development agencies in the rapid and sustained rise of social protection as a policy agenda throughout Africa in the early twenty-first century. These agencies acted as “policy pollinators,” using various tactics to persuade African governments to implement social protection programmes. Such tactics included generating empirical evidence that cash transfers have beneficial impacts, financing social protection programmes, building state capacity to deliver social protection, and commissioning national social protection policies. Nonetheless, some governments resisted these pressures and inducements, because their political interests and national priorities were not well aligned with the agendas of development agencies. Questions arise about whether the adoption of social protection by African governments should be understood as a nationally owned or “donor-driven” process.