Professional identity and local realities: social work education in Ethiopia

ABSTRACT

The three historical eras of social work education in Ethiopia are examined in this article, with particular attention devoted to how each era began, was contextualized, and was integrated with service delivery. Interviews with 28 social work graduates and faculty members were conducted as part of the qualitative research study. Additionally, unpublished documents from ministerial offices and universities were examined. The data are arranged and presented chronologically to offer the experiences in the three periods. The analysis found that various contextualizing strategies for social work education were used through curriculum development, fieldwork, community engagement, and obtaining research outputs. Making social work education more responsive to the national context has been challenging due to a lack of country-specific reading materials and policy frameworks that define professional social work and standards of practice. Further, the absence of social work for 30 years has erased the profession’s identity from public memory. The continued development of social work education and practice in Ethiopia will benefit from the creation of local educational resources and policy frameworks.

KEYWORDS:

• Contextualization
• indigenous knowledge
• international collaboration
• professional boundary
• professional identity
• social work education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Derg was a unifying Marxist-Leninist one-party system that promoted communism and, eventually, socialist ideology. Derg abolished land tenure in opposition to Ethiopia’s feudal system and launched a land reform program. As a result, Derg has nationalized all means of production, including homes, land, farms, and industry.

2. After deposing the Derg regime in the war, the Ethnic Federalist Political party, known as the EPRDF, took control of the country in 1991. Despite frequent government interventions in several sectors, this government supported the free market economy.