ABSTRACT
Attending the 1974 Association for Social Work Education in Africa workshop on social work teaching and field work was, at the time, like a breath of fresh air (see Umbrach & Yimam, 1975). The indigenisation of social work permeated the sessions. The participants were young academics from 11 African countries who, when they compared notes, found that they were all unknowingly grappling with the same issues. They had all been puzzling for years over the issue of the incongruence, in many ways, of the Western model of social work with the local realities in their respective countries. And, they were searching earnestly for a way out. The late Professor Abdul Muneim Shawky of Egypt inspired in the participants a strong spirit of confidence in their reading of the situation, and encouraged keen critical examination of what many thought had indisputable validity (Shawky, 1972). He was indeed unique among his generation of pioneers in Egyptian social work education, all of whom were well-respected scholars who had graduated from renowned US universities. They were content in carrying out their responsibility to bring the latest US social work literature into the Arab world, writing textbooks and teaching their ideas to their trusting students. They were hardly disturbed by expressions of dissatisfaction by frontline workers on the incongruences between the transplanted model and local conditions. Those leading educators generally viewed social work as a solid scientific profession, with global applicability, no questions asked. They hardly entertained the ideas that it might require critical examination or need modification to fit local conditions elsewhere in the world. But, to their credit, they succeeded in instilling in their students a deep devotion to their noble profession, inculcating in them a profound feeling of mission (a cause, not a function).
