Comprehensive social protection systems, underpinned by state coordination and sustainable funding, are instrumental to promote inclusive development, and in the past two decades many African governments and international partners have come to recognise this. Inclusive development aims to reduce inequality and poverty and thus must explicitly include the poor and vulnerable, the excluded and marginalised. This document summarises the work INCLUDE has done on the link between social protection (SP) and inclusive development. Additionally, it sets the agenda for topics that merit more attention and discussion among researchers and policy makers in the near future.