When Social Work Forgets Us: Ugandan Students on Indigenisation of Social Work Education and the Future of the Profession

Where are we in this Story? The call for indigenisation

Being a social work student in Uganda often feels like a burden of contradiction. Many students do not voluntarily enroll in this program, and even those of us who do are frequently asked: What do social workers even do? What do you aim to achieve with that degree? We learn sophisticated theories from Freud, Durkheim, and other Western theorists in class, yet many of us quietly wonder: How do some of these concepts relate to the problems in our communities? The information occasionally seems irrelevant, alien, and disconnected.

It gets heavier outside of the classroom: similar to national authorities who have derided our profession as "useless," people react with bewilderment or contempt when I present myself as a social worker. Often, it feels as though social work forgets to study us in our own context, leaving our realities invisible in the classroom. We memorize foreign theories for exams, reproduce them to pass or fail, yet in the field, they feel distant and hard, if not impossible to apply.

Deep inside, we keep asking: Where are we in this story? Why does a discipline built on care and justice ignore our own ways of knowing and doing? It was in this questioning that I first encountered the idea of indigenisation, the call to ground education in our cultures and lived realities. Student voices calling for this change were magnified in my dissertation, “We Study Social Work, but It Does Not Study Us,” reimagining social work education in Uganda through students' perspectives on indigenisation. For us, indigenisation is not just a theory; it is the path to reclaiming relevance and building a profession that truly serves our people.

Whose Knowledge Counts?

Social work education in Uganda was introduced under British colonial rule and remains shaped by Western dominance (Nilsen et al., 2023; Twikirize, 2014). Today, nearly 30 universities teach social work (Tusasiirwe, 2023), yet the curriculum still sidelines African perspectives, leaving graduates disconnected from community realities (Spitzer & Twikirize, 2014; Tusasiirwe, 2022).

From the beginning, foreign models were assumed to be universal (Midgley, 1981). Yet long before colonialism, African societies had effective systems of care, solidarity, and conflict resolution. Their erasure under colonialism created dependence on Eurocentric models that often prove less effective or even harmful (Osei-Hwedie, 1993). Colonialism dominated minds as well as land, as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1998) reminds us. This implied professional imperialism in social work: Indigenous customs were marginalized while Western ideologies were proclaimed the norm (Walton & Abo El Nasr, 1988; Spitzer, 2019).

Decades later, graduates still struggle to apply these tools, and the profession is dismissed as “useless” and “irrelevant” (Tusasiirwe, 2020). This dismissal may not be accidental. When education ignores local realities, it loses legitimacy. Indigenisation, therefore, seeks to bridge this gap and achieve epistemic justice (Chilisa, 2012; Mbembe, 2016) to reclaim relevance in our education and practice.

Reimagining Social Work Education: Why Indigenisation Matters

The call to indigenize social work education has grown since the 1970s (Walton & Abo El Nasr, 1988), especially in postcolonial societies where Western knowledge still dominates. A profession built on justice and cultural relevance too often reproduces Eurocentric models, sidelining the very communities it claims to serve. Midgley (1981) described this as “professional imperialism.” Across Africa, this has weakened the profession’s ability to address urgent social challenges (Ibrahima & Mattaini, 2019).

..reforms must begin with education, embedding indigenous knowledge, nurturing critical consciousness, and preparing reflective practitioners rooted in their own contexts Spitzer & Twikirize, 2014

In Uganda, this tension is felt most sharply in the classroom. Students describe lectures that feel disconnected from reality and theories presented as if they were unquestionable truths. They are told to “apply theory,” but are rarely taught how to adapt these theories to local contexts. This gap between the curriculum and community realities is today one of the profession’s deepest crises in non‑Western contexts. If social work is to have a future here, reforms must begin with education, embedding indigenous knowledge, nurturing critical consciousness, and preparing reflective practitioners rooted in their own contexts (Spitzer & Twikirize, 2014).

Indigenisation, then, is not about nostalgia or cultural pride. It is a demand for relevance and justice, embedding local knowledge into education, research, and practice (Rankopo & Osei‑Hwedie, 2011; Ekoh & Agbawodikeizu, 2023). By demanding a curriculum that reflects the realities of our communities, we are not calling for a total rejection of Western ideologies. Rather, we seek a meaningful integration of indigenous knowledge and perspectives so that social work in Uganda can be both locally relevant and globally conversant. This resonates with Twikirize (2014), who views indigenisation as a form of contextual adaptation, modifying theories to fit our context while still maintaining strong links to their origins, thereby balancing global ideas with local realities.

Speaking up about relevance in a system that treats students as passive recipients of knowledge is itself an act of courage. Questions like “Why do we not learn our own?” expose what I call ‘curriculum racism’: the systemic privileging of foreign knowledge while sidelining indigenous ways of knowing. In this sense, student voices embody what decolonial scholars call epistemic justice—the right for local knowledge to stand on equal footing (Gray et al., 2013; Tuck & Yang, 2012).

Crucially, students also proposed strategies for reimagining social work education. They called for local case studies, restructuring field placements to emphasize community‑based learning, involving communities and indigenous knowledge holders in curriculum design, and training educators to embrace indigenous perspectives. Thus, indigenisation should not be symbolic; it must be a deliberate transformation of both content and pedagogy so that social work in Uganda finally makes sense to the people it serves.

The Politics and Future of Social Work

Social work must go beyond service provision and charity; it must interrogate the systems of power and oppression that shape people’s lives. In Uganda, this means confronting the neocolonial structures that continue to define education, development, and even professional standards. Neutrality is a myth: every pedagogical choice is political (Dominelli, 2002). What we choose to teach, whose voices are heard, whose knowledge is validated, whose realities are reflected, is never neutral.

If social work is to remain relevant, it must be brave enough to question its foundations. Political social work must challenge rather than replicate unjust systems. This includes supporting reforms that decolonise education and build locally responsive models of teaching and practice.

This is why indigenisation matters. Education that ignores local realities produces graduates who may be technically skilled but socially dislocated, unable to serve their communities effectively (Twikirize & Spitzer, 2019). If we are trained only in foreign models, we risk becoming fluent in the language of other societies but strangers in our own. Grounding learning in local struggles, values, and problem‑solving traditions prepares us to engage global challenges from a position of strength.

The struggle for indigenisation also speaks to larger global questions. Climate change, inequality, conflict, and gender‑based violence confront societies everywhere; though their manifestations differ, they force us to ask: how can social work remain relevant in the face of such crises? For Uganda, the answer begins with education—reforming curricula to embed indigenous knowledge, nurture critical consciousness, and involve communities in co‑creating knowledge.

Decolonising the curriculum does not mean rejecting international knowledge. It means engaging with the world on our own terms, ensuring that social work in Uganda is culturally relevant while still globally conversant (Chilisa, 2012; Gray et al., 2013). Our call is not for isolation but for balance. It is within this hybridity that the future of social work lies.

Conclusion

Social work in Uganda is more than a profession; it is a struggle for relevance, dignity, and justice. We cannot build a meaningful profession on borrowed foundations; the future of social work must be written in our own language, with our own people in mind.

For too long, our classrooms have echoed with voices from elsewhere while our own knowledge systems have been sidelined, leaving graduates ill‑prepared for the realities of their communities. Students like myself feel this disconnect deeply: the theories we memorize rarely speak to our lives, and the profession we train for is too often dismissed as irrelevant.

Yet within this frustration lies courage. Across classrooms and conversations, students are daring to question, to demand, and to imagine alternatives. We call for a curriculum that embeds indigenous knowledge and perspectives at its core, and reflects our lived realities. This is not just an academic reform but a struggle for power, legitimacy, and recognition.

Indigenisation is therefore not optional; it is an urgent necessity for the survival and growth of social work in Uganda and across Africa. The future of the profession depends on our ability to build models of education and practice that are both locally meaningful and globally engaged. If we succeed, social work will not only reclaim its legitimacy at home but also offer the world fresh perspectives rooted in African knowledge and resilience.

The responsibility now lies with educators, institutions, and policymakers to act. As students, we have spoken clearly: if social work is to thrive in Uganda, it must first make sense here. Otherwise, if nothing changes, nothing changes.

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