Social Work In Sub Saharan Africa

2.2.3 CHALLENGES IN TRAINING SOCIAL WORKERS IN AFRICA

The challenges of social work profession in Sub-Saharan Africa are rooted in the colonial era. With the profession being introduced to these developing states, department of social welfare put in place were meant to reflect priorities of colonial administration concerned to control both African youth and perceived vagrancy in the growing urban centres of the continent (Iliffe, 1992).

The colonial history also shaped the modern state of universities in the region. Just like social welfare departments, Sub-Saharan African universities were developed to meet the needs of their colonizers. Unsurprisingly the social work practices introduced in Africa by its colonizers in the past were those

With some countries having more than ten official languages such as South Africa has eleven official languages and the diversity presents barriers for social work training and a bias for the predominant languages. English has become the official language used in higher institutes in Sub Saharan African countries despite the fact that the language is not of African origin. This therefore poses a challenge for Social workers once they in the field as they are trained in English despite the fact that large numbers of the population in some countries such as South Africa are not English speaking (Earle, 2008). The specific language used by social workers could reinforce discrimination. Specific languages used by social workers could reinforce discrimination or undermine the continuance of a discriminatory discourse as cited by (Rissik

Laird (2004) a study of conflict revealed that students start training bearing their experience of ethnic or religious conflict. Many students enter training with their prejudices and misconceptions firmly intact. Students from dominant groups may wishing to enter the social work profession are not exempted from prejudice for they belong in either a dominant or minority group. Cultural perceptions of other groups may for one influence students negatively. People who have strong prejudice towards one minority groups are usually intolerant of all minorities (Macionis, 2010). The problem can be most prominent in African countries with diverse population. One though might argue that Swazi students enrolled in Swaziland institutions hardly suffer from such conflict, as the country is considered as having one ethnicity. This on its own can be a problem if in cultural competence is ignored in social work curricula as there are minority groups such as Mozambicans and Indians residing in the