Natural resources, authoritarian regimes, social services and the limits of cash transfers in Middle Africa

Abstract

The francophone and especially iberophone countries of the UN subregion Middle Africa are a gap in the literature on social policies in sub-Saharan Africa. A comparative analysis shows that there are differences in the provision of social services in the mainly authoritarian regimes in Middle Africa. Countries with a current or past form of authoritarianism that include elites from regions across the country are less underperforming regarding social services than the more exclusive authoritarian regimes based on one region or even one family. However, against parts of the literature, no Middle African country introduced a tax-financed age-based cash transfer, although most of them, having natural resources, are not low-income countries. Many have fragmented small short-term emergency cash transfers that the literature expects rather in low-income countries. The remarkable exceptions are the richest upper middle-income countries, namely Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, where research did not reveal any cash transfer programmes. Social policies are strikingly unimportant as electoral issues.