ABSTRACT
Common perceptions of children in Africa tend to focus on poverty, famine, and war. There has been less attention given to the successes of African countries that have aimed to improve the lives of children. One such success is Ghana, which is a regional and continental leader in child protection issues and continues to nurture a robust social service workforce. Yet, there exists some detachment in the implementation of child welfare laws and practice. To address this gap, there has been a recent global movement to address child protection issues by strengthening child protection systems and specifically social work education. This chapter uses a process evaluation to examine an international university partnership between a Global North Canadian university and a Global South Ghanaian university to integrate child protection knowledge into the university curriculum and to produce the next generation of social service workers. This chapter chronicles the development and structure of the partnership, discusses the opportunities and challenges faced, and suggests a future agenda to support the endogenous strengths inherent within Ghanaian universities to work towards improving the status of children and families and to serve as a model for other African contexts.
