The Future of Social Protection in a Borderless Africa: Social Innovation for the Management of Risk and Uncertainty amongst Informal Africa Migrants.

This is a conceptual paper that proposes a shift of traditional social policy prerogative from the nation‐state to a regional supra agent in the body of the African Union. That will improvise for a social policy response to the high vulnerability of informal African migrants within Africa. The paper builds on research findings and literature that indicate enduring informal mobility and vulnerability across national borders in Africa. It argues that the African Union as a supra‐political agent can directly affect and protect the well‐being of vulnerable African migrants. Existing in a vacuum between two governments (the host and home government), the socio‐political context of these vulnerable migrants effectively exclude them from international or national social intervention targeting vulnerable groups in Africa. Their situation requires an institutional innovation in the African Union that will deviate from traditional social policy dispensation by a national government. This argument brings an integrative and long‐term approach to social protection for poor African migrants and raises grounds for empirical inquiry into institutional innovation in social policy dispensation within the African Union.