This monograph explores the notion of social exclusion in sub-Saharan Africa and summarises available baseline indicators of the scale of inequality in five selected countries: Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa, Ethiopia and Nigeria. The study was done as part of the Social Exclusion Knowledge Network (SEKN), set up under the auspices of the World Health Organization's Commission on Social Determinants of Health. The Commission's most important objective is to leverage policy change by turning existing public health knowledge into actionable global and national agendas. SEKN's scope is to identify and examine the relational processes excluding particular groups of people from engaging fully in community and social life.