The paper examines how market reforms are reconstituting the notion of social welfare services in Africa within the context of the rural-urban divide. Market reforms in the social welfare sector seek to reverse this divide and negotiate a new consensus in the rural-urban equation. Priority and funding re-adjustment by the state, decentralisation, deregulation, and commercialisation are new elements in the provision of social welfare services in Africa. The objectives, among others, are to facilitate equity and access to those services, especially by the rural population. But the extent to which those objectives have been realised remain questionable.
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