Social policy and its administration, is one of those policy areas fraught 
with the dangers of totalling negative or diminishing returns and abject 
failure in helping those lives policy-makers sought to ameliorate in the 
first place. Amongst others, one doesn't have to share the world-weary 
cynicism and angst of libertarians towards central gov't bureaucrats or 
pen-pushers in their attempts to ameliorate individual lives, to realise that 
most social policies only end up doing just the opposite of what they purport 
to correct or ameliorate. To the extent that this is the case, libertarians 
still find succour in Milton Friedman's anti- central gov't social planning 
mantra: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. If the buck on anti- 
central gov't social planning or social reforms currently stops with 
Friedman, then it began with classical liberals like Albert Venn Dicey. In 
his magnum opus, Law and Public Opinion in England in the 19th Century, Dicey 
made it known explicitly that ultimately he regards central or social 
planning as a "spiritual child of socialism" and in fact a precursor to the 
type of collectivism that negates, undermines and crowds-out individual self- 
help and reliance. When they are not exaggerating, and not playing to the 
gallery of doctrinaire conservatism, I think it is fair to say that 
libertarians are not entirely wrong in their angst against central gov't 
social planning; but ultimately evidence does in fact support the view that 
properly meted out social policy has changed lives for the better and still 
stand a good chance of socially ameliorating the lives of the 
underprivileged, the poor and the vulnerable. From Franklin Delano 
Roosevelt's New Deal liberal project to Gordon Brown and New Labour's 
parodying of the latter social policies, such policies have lifted the poor, 
the underprivileged and the vulnerable from long-term abject and slum poverty 
and social despondency to one of better and hopes of better.

 History and current policy discussions or enquiries inform us that these 
socially liberal programmes have in fact turned out to ameliorate the 
unfortunate circumstances of the poor, the vulnerable and the underprivileged 
not because they - those being helped out - were suddenly the recipients of 
generous welfare entitlements from a generous State with a purse bursting at 
the seams with never-ending cash to burn and or altruism galore. Rather, 
these policies were a success or have become a success because they were 
consequentially designed to help the poor, the vulnerable and the 
underprivileged to help themselves. The poor, the vulnerable and the 
underprivileged are best helped when it is not at the expense of their own 
abilities and or efforts to help themselves. In essence, the best way to help 
the poor, the underprivileged and the vulnerable is to complement their own 
efforts and or abilities to help themselves. Suffice to say that the best 
social policies aimed at helping the poor, the underprivileged and the 
vulnerable, are essentially complementarities in that they strike a very 
delicate balance between self- help and collective altruism or benevolence 
and does not as a consequence crowd-out or undermine both features. This is 
the first point.

Thus far, a very useful caveat to social policy formulators and 
administrators remains an open-ended one: the success of a policy does not 
entirely depend on the material and moral inputs; i.e., policy doesn't become 
a success just because we care for the poor, the vulnerable or the 
underprivileged - altruism or good intentions - and the amount of resources 
we are prepared to throw after those we are trying to salvage. Rather, the 
history of social policy continues to evince that successful social policies 
were as much a result of both altruism and material inputs as they were as a 
result of the social philosophy that the best way to socially ameliorate the 
disadvantaged, is to progress in accordance with the view that the ultimate 
objective of social policy is to enhance or beef up self- help or reliance. 
Which is to say that the poor, the vulnerable and the underprivileged and 
their interests are best served by the social philosophy of helping them to 
help themselves. This then should be the philosophical framework that 
undergirds the policy thrusts and drives of the Alliance in their efforts to 
help the legion of Gambian poor, underprivileged and vulnerable. I don't 
think it would be far wide-off-the-mark to suggest that the Alliance - 
especially, with Mr Darbo's recent declaration of making the Gambia a country 
where honesty and hard work yield handsome dividends - buys into the gist of 
this social philosophy. 

I have now given social policy a philosophical framework. Let me now proceed 
to provide a contextual and an operational framework for the delineated 
social philosophy.

Contrary to current intellectual studies on African society - many of which 
are heralding or have already heralded the death or decimation of the family 
or rather the extended family network in modern Africa - the extended family 
network remains relevant and extant. To be sure, modernity and all the 
socially disruptive forces it had helped unleash on African societies, has to 
a great extent rolled back the frontiers of the extended family network. 
Rather than fatally undermine it, modernity has merely unleashed a surrogate 
and looser extended family networking: the nuclear family system. The nuclear 
family system is a mere modern aberration of the extended family system and 
certainly shares what was central to the extended family system: that of 
networking the interests of clans and affirming the fealty of kinship that 
holds true of dispersed communities that have migrated to the urban areas 
from rusticated communities in post- colonial Africa. In lieu of the 
aforesaid, the nuclear family system remains a modern variation of the 
extended family system - albeit in a very loose and less tight knit way; and 
most of the welfare baggages dutifully and traditionally beholden to the 
extended family system have greatly been discarded by the nuclear family 
system due primarily to modern economic and social constraints. The nuclear 
family system, therefore, is but an African bourgeois way of maintaining, 
honouring and supporting those historical affinities, fealties and 
responsibilities to families of yore by granting looser forms of networking 
vis-à-vis welfare support and maintenance for the lesser well-off members of 
that networking families. To the extent that this is true, then the extended 
family system of networking in Africa remains relevant and extant; 
especially, its historically duty-bound and morally beholden role of welfare 
support for the needy members of such families.

The very relevance of family life or the extended family network is very 
relevant to the welfare economics of modern Africa. This is why I deemed it 
worth a moment's pause to pursue a disquisitional delineation of family and 
its current status in Africa. The reason why the extended family network 
remains relevant to the welfare economics of modern Africa lies in the fact 
that given the scarcity of resources available to the State to disburse or 
redistribute to the poor, the vulnerable and the underprivileged, the 
extended family system remains the most economically and socially viable 
outlet for any such generous State disbursement or redistribution. Conceding 
that much doesn't mean that things should forever be thus; rather, this is an 
argument for retaining a very rich and sustaining sub-culture and the 
feasibility of which aids the welfare economics of modern Africa. To this 
end, I submit that the extended family network be officially identified as 
the operational framework with which the Alliance's welfare economics 
disburses or redistributes funds to help the poor, the vulnerable and the 
underprivileged - well, at the very least as both a short- and medium- term 
socio-economic measure. Should this be the case, let me now proceed to 
recommend key policy thrusts of the delineated social philosophy. Here, two 
broad policy areas should suffice for the interim as public policy formally 
identifies a long-term welfare economics that is sustainable, generous and 
not debilitating to individual enterprise and or self- help. The two broad 
policy areas and their contents are:

I. Fiscal Redistribution For The Extended Family Network: As argued above, 
the best that there is in Africa today - in terms of the resources, framework 
and structures readily available - in disbursing and redistributing funds or 
help to the poor, the vulnerable and the underprivileged, is an official 
recognition by the State of the role the extended family networking plays in 
the welfare of those in need in Africa. The State ought to go further and use 
this extended family networking to disburse and redistribute the funds it has 
allocated for the poor, the vulnerable and the underprivileged. There are 
generally two ways to go about with this proposition:
1. A pro- extended family tax regime that reflects the social realities or 
responsibilities of a particular tax-payer. In other words, the tax one is 
liable to pay - be it on income, corporate, profit, business, etc., etc., - 
should to a great extent reflect one's social responsibilities;
2. In rare circumstances of extreme poverty, a 'negative income tax scheme' 
should be radically considered for those with huge social responsibilities 
but without an adequate income base to sustain such social responsibilities.

II. The Socio-economics Of the Complementarities Of Self- Help And Collective 
Or State Activism: This should be the essential policy thrust of the 
Alliance's welfare economics. Such a policy thrust should at the very least 
be a genuine reflection of the social philosophy outlined in my introduction; 
in that to genuinely help the poor, the vulnerable and the underprivileged 
properly, social policy must aim primarily at complementing the efforts of 
individuals in their efforts to help themselves out of their unfortunate 
circumstances. Thus, the content of such a policy thrust need have the 
following measures:
1. Decentralisation of ways and means of acquiring jobs and or enquiring 
about the availability of jobs or co-ordinated information on both the local 
and national job-market. A creation of career, job and labour centres at High 
Schools, Tertiary Colleges, Community Centres, should help facilitate such a 
process;
2. Liberal, measured and effective loan schemes to aid enterprising 
individuals;
3. Infrastructural, business and organisational support to help complement 
the efforts and or abilities of individuals and communal enterprises to keep 
abreast with trends, developments and potentials pitfalls in their respective 
endeavours through frequent State or private sector initiated seminars, 
workshops and intensive trainings. This policy measure can easily be 
incorporated into the decentralisation of information of the local and 
national job market through the creation of job, labour or career centres;
4. Making relevant, rewarding and attractive again those supposedly 
unattractive vocations that the young indigenous populace are historically 
unwilling to go into through such liberal schemes like proper vocational 
training, organisational and infrastructural support and fiscal policies that 
reflect the difficulties of those in such endeavours;
5. Design education curricula - at the Middle or High School levels, at the 
very least - to reflect individual abilities and efforts as soon as this is 
becoming conspicuous and demonstrable. Such a policy measure should go in 
tandem with the policy measure that aims to make relevant, rewarding and 
attractive again those vocations that have been de-indigenised over the years 
through sheer neglect of the youths.

The welfare economics outlined in this essay rests on the presupposition of a 
healthy and growing Gambian economy. It goes without saying that what 
essentially undergirds the proposed welfare economics is not only a clear-cut 
policy thrust and a benevolent activist State; rather, a very healthy and 
growing Gambian economy capable of creating employment opportunities for the 
Gambia's increasing legion of the unemployed. Also, such a welfare economics 
need not negate or make obviate the State's responsibilities for those it is 
morally beholden to and duty-bound to directly help. In fact the more the 
State cuts the unemployment line through the aforementioned welfare 
economics, the freer it will be to tend to those it is morally beholden to 
and duty-bound to directly help - otherthings being equal.

The welfare economics I have proposed here is a liberal one. As a classical 
liberal, and because of the inherent contradictions and conflicts between 
individual liberty and egalitarianism, I no longer believe in egalitarianism 
as construed by socialists and ideologues of their sort. This, however, 
doesn't mean we are no longer morally beholden to work for a more fairer, 
freer and equal society. To tidy this ideological mess, liberals have now 
proposed equity as a value to replace any loss incurred in giving up on 
egalitarianism. By equity, liberals now refer to it to mean the idea that 
some amount of proportionate inequality is tenable and tolerable in a society 
that still cherishes and harbours the intention of pursuing the ideals of a 
freer, fairer and more equal society insofar as the pursuit of such ideals do 
not inflict any disproportionate damages or constrictions on bourgeois 
liberties and freedoms. Let Will Hutton of the Industrial Society explain:

"Equity as a value encompasses equality but seasons it with the notion of 
fairness; thus, an equitable society is one which concedes that it might be 
fair for individuals to experience a measure of inequality if it promotes 
their liberty or rewards the intensity with which they have worked. But it 
must also be a society in which those who hold power in the private and 
public sector are held fiercely to account by a vigorous democracy embedded 
in a fair voting system and powerful regulation."

This then should be the long-term political agenda of the Alliance. The 
welfare economics spelt out in this essay certainly will go a long way in 
aiding any such political agenda.

Hamjatta Kanteh

  



   

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