Rwanda

Profile

  • Population: 12.3 million people
  • Rural population: 4/5 (80%) of the population is rural based and most of the urban population has a rural home and community

Social work education institutions (SWEIs)

  • Kaminuza y’u Rwanda/University of Rwanda (1999), Department of Social Sciences
  • University of Technology and Arts of Byumba (UTAB) (previously Byumba Polytechnic Institute or Institut Polytechnique de Byumba (IPB) (2006)
  • Catholic University of Rwanda (2010)

Social Work Organisations (SWOs)

  • National Organisation of Social Workers (NOSW)

Social work names

Imirimo mbonezamubano

History of Social Work

The history of social work in Rwanda has four phases. These are: Indigenous Phase, Colonial Phase, Genocide Phase and Reconstruction Phase.

  • Indigenous Phase: The people of the Kingdom had the same language, rituals and God. Social welfare and services were provided by family, community, Chiefs and King (Mwami). generally, there was peace, and conflict within and among tribes was managed fairly well by the monarchy.
  • Colonial Phase: In 1899, Rwanda was colonised by Germany. To maximise their control, the colonists marginalised the monarchy and promoted ethnic divisions. Colonialism reduced community, family capacity and monarchy’s capacity to provide social welfare and services. During this period, missionaries came, as part of, or working with or for the colonists. In 1940, missionaries from Belgium started to train Assistant Social Workers (ASW) to support social services (health, education and agriculture). The training used colonial, western and Christian knowledge at the expense of indigenous knowledge. Foreign colonial religions increased tensions in communities. Ethnic divisions escalated and pan-Africanism emerged. Fight for independence started and resulted in liberation in 1962.
  • Independence Phase: During this phase, ethnic conflict continued and social services were impacted. The church especially the Catholics provided social services but they also contributed to the ethnic tensions.
  • Genocide Phase: Rising ethnic tensions resulted in genocide in 1994. The killings resulted in more social problems: orphans, widows and refugees. A program to promote peace and reconciliation followed. In the same year, training of ASWs was reintroduced by the NGOs, and again they used western approaches. The government prioritised local community-based solutions were and these were:
  • Reconstruction Phase: This period is characterised by economic and social reorganisation and development. NGOs and aid increased, making the country donor dependent. Social work training started at Kaminuza y’u Rwanda/University of Rwanda (1999), University of Technology and Arts of Byumba (UTAB) (previously Byumba Polytechnic Institute or Institut Polytechnique de Byumba (IPB) (2006) and Catholic University of Rwanda (2010). The current phase is characterised by participatory development and economic development focused on agriculture. The main challenges, from a social perspective, are HIV and AIDS, orphans, disability, widows, women, youths and poverty.

Kalinganire’s Social Work Practice Model (2017)

Social work in Rwanda (as in the rest of Africa) will succeed if it embraces the following traditional values and practices.

  • Ubunyarwanda (national pride): pride in national citizenship, cooperation and cohesion
  • Dignity: self-respect and good character
  • Cooperation: working together
  • Itorero ry’igihugu: aim to be good, live in peace and harmony, strong sense of cultural values. These values are:
    • Perseverance
    • Mutual aid
    • Individual and social responsibility to family and community especially children.

This applies to other African communities as well, not just Rwanda.

Kalinganire and Rutikanda (2014a) describe social work in Rwanda somewhat optimistically as moving beyond social relief to an inclusive problem-solving approach applying home-grown solutions, privileging collective action, mutual aid, social responsibility, and stakeholder involvement in keeping with national policies emphasising the empowerment of people, particularly to promote their ownership (self-determination) at village umudugudu level (Kalinganire, and others, 2017, p. 320).

Poverty alleviation, economic and political barriers, women’s and children’s rights, and issues related to reproductive health and HIV and AIDS cannot be solved by ameliorative casework interventions. The social work profession in Rwanda will need to lead the way in developing culturally responsive interventions, methods, and practice approaches to promote societal wellbeing, strengthen family and community systems, and secure cultural values and government commitment to ensure sustainable social welfare activities (Kalinganire, and others, 2017, p. 325).

Acknowledgements: (Charles Kalinganire, So`Nia Gilkey, and Laura J. Haas, Social work practice in Rwanda: The challenge of adapting Western models to fit local contexts. In Mel Gray (Editor) The Handbook of Social Work and Social Development in Africa, 2017)

Roles of a professional body or association of social workers

  • Creating a code of ethics relevant to Africa: To create a code of ethics guided by African values that have been used to provide social services since time immemorial.
  • Societal recognition: make social work known in families and communities including what social work is in local language, the roles of social workers and how the complement not replace or compete with the roles of families and communities. Presently, in most African communities, social work is not understood and at times it is hated because of its focus on western ideas, knowledge, philosophy, theories, methods and literature.
  • Creating a local definition of social work: to help social work being understood and appreciated. Definitions in local languages will be more useful.
  • Creating relevance: making social work in Africa more developmental to enable it to respond to the social issues, challenges and problems on the continent. Social work has to respond to mass poverty in a developmental not remedial way.
  • Professional recognition: To raise social work to the level of other professions, and to give social workers respect and recognition of their service.
  • Professional regulation: Ensure that social workers follow ethical principles that make them accountable for any professional misconduct, breach of ethics or confidentiality.
  • Professional standards: To oversee social worker’s performance, attitude towards families, communities, peers, profession and the society. This builds trust and ensures credibility of social work.
  • Training monitoring: To monitor social work training and fieldwork.
  • Produce literature: To research, write and publish relevant literature for social work training and fieldwork.
  • Advocacy: To advocate for social justice and social services.
  • Continuous training: To lead continuous professional development (CPD) of social workers and all people providing social services. This is important especially for social workers trained in the colonial period, those trained using colonial syllabus or those trained outside Africa.
  • Supporting and empowering indigenous services: To support families and communities in their roles of providing social services and not disempower them.
  • Trade unionism: Act as the trade union of social workers to represent their interests and labour rights as workers, entrepreneurs, volunteers and social innovators.
  • Consumerism: protect families, communities and employers from poor services from social workers, receiving complaints and dealing with them.
  • Collaboration with other associations: Work and collaborate with other professional bodies in the country, in the region, in Africa and globally.
  • Policy work: Creating policies or alternative policies to advance social development and to scrutinize existing policies of the government.
  • Recognising social workers: Celebrate social workers through national social work day, global social work day and providing awards to social workers, students, academics and social work organisations.
  • Networking: providing opportunities for social workers to network, share experiences and listen to others through indaba, conference, webinar, newsletters, journals, websites, social media e.g. groups of Facebook or WhatsApp, dinner etc
  • Decolonising: To decolonise social work to make it relevant to Africa communities, this work involves, among others
    • Using African philosophy, including values, ethics, theories, models etc
    • Using African ethics and removing colonial ethics
    • Using African literature and removing colonial literature
    • Using African academics and replacing non-African academics
    • Using a home grown syllabus, and replace colonial syllabus – in the process avoid brain drain
    • Using and valuing African methods, techniques and strategies of social work  and not non-African methods
    • Valuing African history of social work and Africans who have contributed to that history
    • Contributing African knowledge and methods to global social work and not just receiving global knowledge without scrutiny
    • To educate families, communities, organisations and government about how to remove colonial practices, methods, knowledge etc from the social work services that they provide
    • Generally, make African social work more developmental in approach so that the profession becomes relevant to our families, communities, organisations and government

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