How Global and Local Institutions Shaped Social Work Education in Africa

Social work education in Africa didn’t emerge in a vacuum. Its development was shaped by powerful institutional forces operating at both global and local levels. Understanding how these institutions influenced the profession helps us appreciate both the opportunities and challenges that African social work faces today.

The United Nations: catalyst for social work development 🔗

During the 1960s and early 1970s, the United Nations actively pushed colonial administrators to import social work education and practice to Africa. This wasn’t a neutral transfer of knowledge. UN surveys and monographs provided the framework for introducing formal social work programs across the continent, often working directly with colonial governments.

The UN’s Economic Commission for Africa played a particularly influential role. Western professionals were commissioned to conduct needs assessments and advise on developing essential services. These surveys documented social conditions and recommended Western-style social work interventions. However, the values and theoretical foundations came from Western understandings, often reflecting cultural assumptions that didn’t align with African realities.

This institutional support helped establish schools of social work in countries like Ghana, Kenya, and Ethiopia. But it also embedded a fundamental tension: the profession was rooted in European and American contexts rather than African cultural heritages and social structures.

ASWEA: the continental response to indigenization 🔗

African social work educators recognized early on that imported curricula wouldn’t serve their communities effectively. This awareness led to the formation of the Association of Social Work Education in Africa in 1965 during a meeting in Alexandria, Egypt.

Building a pan-African vision 🔗

ASWEA operated between 1971 and 1989, growing to include 50 social work and development training institutions and 100 individual academics from across the continent. The organization gained observer status with the Organization of African Unity, demonstrating its continental reach and legitimacy.

The association had clear objectives: address the dominance of Western curricula and provide regular forums for member schools to discuss social work’s role in national development planning. This wasn’t just about tweaking foreign models. ASWEA advocated for fundamental changes in how social work was taught and practiced.

Concrete actions for curriculum change 🔗

ASWEA didn’t stop at critique. The organization produced practical resources including 87 African case studies for teaching community development and group work. These cases drew from countries like Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, and Ghana, providing students with locally relevant learning materials.

The association also conducted curriculum surveys in 1974 and 1982, comparing social work training programs across Africa. These surveys assessed social, developmental, and practical content, creating benchmarks for improvement and highlighting gaps where African perspectives were missing.

Through conferences, seminars, and publications including the Journal for Social Work Education in Africa, ASWEA created spaces for African educators to share experiences and develop collaborative solutions. The organization’s archives, now called the Uhuru Archives, contain over 3,500 pages documenting this work toward decolonizing and liberating social work in Africa.

Ghana Association of Social Workers: adapting global frameworks locally 🔗

While continental organizations like ASWEA worked on broader curriculum issues, national associations tackled the practical challenges of making social work relevant in specific contexts. Ghana’s experience illustrates how local institutions adapted and resisted imported models.

Establishing professional infrastructure 🔗

The Ghana Association of Social Workers was established in 1971 to develop, strengthen, and unify the social work profession in Ghana. The association opened membership to anyone who completed at least a diploma in social work and affiliated with the International Federation of Social Workers.

Ghana had a head start in social work education. In 1946, the Department of Social Welfare and Housing was established, and soon after, one of the first African institutions for training social workers, the School of Social Work, was founded in Accra.

The challenge of Western dominance 🔗

Despite this early start, Ghanaian social work faced the same problems that ASWEA identified continentally. Researchers found that Ghanaian writings were missing from social work course outlines and that the social work library consisted of 99% Western books. Students were adapting social work practice from urban Chicago to rural Ghana, a mismatch that undermined effectiveness.

The association organized national seminars to address these challenges. These gatherings brought together practitioners, educators, and traditional actors to discuss how social work could better align with Ghanaian values and social structures. The conversations explored tensions between professional social workers trained in Western methods and traditional community support systems that had long provided care for vulnerable people.

Bridging professional and traditional systems 🔗

One key insight from Ghana’s experience was recognizing that professional social workers and traditional actors represented two different “subworlds” that needed to work together. Traditional systems included extended family members and authorities like chiefs or family heads who had protected and cared for vulnerable people before formal social work arrived.

Making social work locally relevant required more than changing textbooks. It demanded understanding how both professional interventions and traditional practices could complement each other in addressing Ghana’s social challenges. This process of localization considered not just culture but also social structures and practical constraints.

The ongoing institutional challenge 🔗

These three institutional layers – global organizations like the UN, continental associations like ASWEA, and national bodies like Ghana’s association – reveal both progress and persistent challenges. The UN helped establish infrastructure but often reinforced Western models. ASWEA created a vision for African-centered education but closed in 1989 due to funding shortages, leaving a gap that wasn’t filled until the Association of Schools of Social Work in Africa formed in 2005.

National associations continue working to make social work relevant to local contexts, but they face resource constraints and the continued dominance of imported educational materials. The institutional architecture that shapes social work education in Africa today remains a work in progress, balancing global professional standards with the urgent need for approaches grounded in African realities.

What do you think? How can current social work institutions in Africa build on ASWEA’s legacy while avoiding the funding and sustainability challenges that led to its closure? What role should national associations play in creating locally relevant curriculum while maintaining connections to global social work developments?

References

1. https://africasocialwork.net/decolonising-african-social-work-selected-abstracts-and-texts/
2. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/002087287201500302
3. https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/629275/3/SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT[2].pdf
4. https://africasocialwork.net/association-of-social-work-education-in-africa-aswea-1965-to-1989/
5. https://1library.net/article/social-work-education-and-practice-in-ghana.q2v07n6y
6. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326202227_Social_Work_in_Ghana_Engaging_Traditional_Actors_in_Professional_Practices