Social Work and Social Welfare in East, West, and Central Africa

This article addresses selected key issues in social work and social welfare in East, West, and Central Africa. Collectively, the countries addressed in these regions are part of sub-Saharan Africa, with a shared history of colonialism, global economic and political marginalization, and, consequently, low-income status and unformed social welfare systems. Two of the regions have supranational organizations, which are increasingly active in social policy. The first is the East African Community (EAC), consisting of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. The EAC has ambitions to create a monetary union and political federation. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) includes fifteen countries bordered in the West and South by the Atlantic Ocean and the North by the Sahara Desert. Central African countries have not formed a regional supranational organization; however, they share a history of armed conflict, some still ongoing, which has led to weak states and lack of basic welfare systems. “Central Africa” is usually taken to include the countries along the Equator sharing the River Congo—for example, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon. Against a backdrop of difficult fiscal positions, they confront challenges of providing education and health care, controlling the spread of HIV/AIDS, and meeting their socioeconomic goals. Alongside these issues, rapid economic changes have resulted in increased urbanization and migration, thereby altering traditional, informal, and localized systems of family support. These too have implications for the care of older people. Contextualized against this background, this article begins with a General Overview, followed by discussions about Systems of Welfare Provision and the Needs of Older People. The next two sections (Decolonization and Post-conflict Social Work Practice) address the debates about what the normative goals of social work should be, given the contexts of welfare systems. Then under the title “Training and Managing the Workforce”, the article ends with an exploration of how the workforce can be reorganized to meet the challenges identified in the preceding discussions.