Drawing for the most part on empirical and historical studies, the contributors elucidate how ordinary African understand, confront and relate to the complex and competing forces of globalisation. They examine how contemporary and historical dynamics have shaped the ways in which globalisation is interacting with, and defining oft-neglected areas of social policy. The authors engage with, and question current, dominant orthodoxies, showing how prevailing economic thinking, particularly that of the dominant multilateral institutions, has undermined a sense of the importance of social policies relevant to a mode of economic development attuned to social transformation in Africa.