A comparative analysis of pension reforms and challenges in Ghana and Nigeria

Ghana and Nigeria recently joined a number of countries that have incorporated fully-funded defined contribution pension programmes into their national social security arrangements. Contemporary analyses of pension reforms, however, continue to focus on middle-income countries in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe, as well as on Member States of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, thereby marginalizing recent pension policy reforms in sub-Saharan African countries. This article examines the complete and partial shifts to defined contribution pension programmes in Nigeria and Ghana respectively, and points to a number of contextual and contingency factors that challenge the use of defined contribution schemes as a means to address problems of benefit adequacy in the sub-Saharan African context.