Workshop
Intergenerational Social Protection and Governance for Healthy Ageing in Africa: Policy Innovations for Inclusive and Resilient Societies
Please register by 21 July.
Africa’s social protection architecture is currently not well equipped to compensate for complex effects of population ageing, climate shocks, and gender inequality. At the same time, some African states are generating innovative policy responses. This interdisciplinary workshop brings together researchers and representatives from international organisations and African Union institutions to advance evidence-based dialogue on demography, social policy, and development studies and generate policy-relevant insights.
Africa is undergoing a profound demographic transformation. By 2050, the continent's population of persons aged 60 and above is projected to exceed 225 million — more than tripling compared to current levels — while simultaneously housing the world's largest and fastest-growing youth cohort. This unprecedented intergenerational co-existence presents both extraordinary opportunity and systemic risk. The continent's social protection architecture, largely inherited from colonial-era frameworks or built incrementally through post-independence reform, remains poorly equipped to absorb the compound pressures of population ageing, climate shocks, widening informality, and persistent gender inequality. At the same time, some African states are generating innovative, home-grown policy responses — from adaptive cash transfer programmes to community-based intergenerational care models — that merit rigorous academic scrutiny and cross-continental dialogue.
Despite the urgency of these challenges, the policy and scholarly conversation on social protection in Africa remains disproportionately fragmented across development economics, public health, and social policy disciplines, as well as between Global South practitioners and Global North academic institutions. This workshop is designed to bridge these divides, foregrounding African realities while drawing on comparative evidence from international social protection systems, global governance frameworks, and the latest demographic research.