Chapter 3 : Exploring the Potential of an Ecosocial Approach for African Social Work Education

As the global environmental crisis continues to threaten the wellbeing and livelihood of people in marginalised communities like those in Africa, the social work profession is urged to expand its curriculum to include natural environmental concerns. This would enable social work to understand and respond to the interactive and interdependent concerns of social, economic, political, and environmental factors. This chapter centres an ecosocial approach in African social work education to decolonise professional knowledge, promote indigenous wisdom about human-nature relatedness, and facilitate environmental sustainability in Africa. An important empirical starting point is to examine how African universities have conceptualised and operationalised the ‘environment’ within the social work curriculum. We reviewed the undergraduate social work curricula of 12 African universities based in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa to determine to what extent the concepts of the ecosocial approach and its key components like ecology and the natural environment are addressed in African social work curricula. The results show that the Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) programmes/curricula of the different universities do not adequately capture the content of an ecosocial approach (or the significance of the natural environment for human wellbeing). We recommend that BSW programmes in Africa should consider a mandatory module/course in an ecosocial approach, emphasise transdisciplinarity; and use field practicum to promote an ecosocial approach.