ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the progress of social work education and practice in Africa from 1971 to 1990. It outlines the forces which have influenced and challenged the profession in its struggles to decolonize social work education and make social work practice more Afrocentric. Based on historical research, particularly documentary analysis of the conference proceedings of the Association for Social Work Education in Africa (ASWEA) between 1973 and 1986, it describes the dissatisfaction of African social work practitioners and academics with Western social work models and curricula, as well as the challenges to developing Africancentred approaches. These conference proceedings are important historical records of the evolution of social welfare, social work education and the social work profession in Africa. The material in this chapter must be seen against the historical literature on indigenization in Africa – and what Indigenous means in the African context – beginning with Shawky’s (1972) and Midgley’s (1981) seminal work in this area (see Gray and Coates, 2008; Osei-Hwedie, 1993, 2002, 2007, 2008, 2011; Osei-Hwedie and Rankopo, 2008, 2012; Rankopo and Osei-Hwedie, 2011 for an outline of this debate, see also Chapter 1).
