This paper takes a retrospective view of social policy in post-colonial sub-Saharan Africa. In doing so it seeks to account for two distinct phases in the nature of social policy and its linkages to wider economic and political objectives in the region. We argue that in social policy in the nationalist phase (1960-1980) played an ex-ante transformative role: in this period investment in education and healthcare is the key mechanism of social policy. The weaknesses of this phase were growing authoritarianism and failure to structurally and dynamically transform the economies. The implications of the retrenchment of the public realm under the neoliberal policy regime were not only in its disastrous social consequences of entitlement failure but extend to the crisis of citizenship and statehood in the region. only subscribers can see the full article