The modern, albeit fragmentary, elements of a social security structure exist in each independent nation of the tropical African sub-region, and largely constitute a legacy from a departed metropolitan power. The legacy has become expensive, expansive, complex, even controversial; it is an administratively burdensome method to alleviate human suffering arising out of the realisation of selected risks to economic security. Thus, social security, since its introduction in three stages in Bismarkian Germany between 1883 and 1889, has spread throughout the world, but its continued growth in tropical Africa – even before the pre-conditions of industrialisation have obtained – is meeting many obstacles: financial, political, philosophical, administrative, and otherwise.