Among the many explanations of why southern Africans coped less effectively with the food crisis of 2001/02 than with the drought of 1991/92, three sets of factors – AIDS, market liberalisation, and governance failures – suggest that new needs for social protection might be emerging that differ from the needs of the past. These factors, which all impact negatively on informal social security systems, are ratcheting up the poverty and vulnerability of people throughout the region. Against these real and possibly increasing needs, serious challenges face the attempt to deliver even minimal levels of publicly funded social protection in southern Africa.