What is Harambee, and at what level in social work and development is it most useful?

Lecture by Rugare Mugumbate

Welcome. I am answering the question: what is Harambee, and at what level in social work and development is it most useful?

I am convener of Mtandao, which is the Africa Social Work and Development Network. I am also a research associate with the University of Johannesburg, and an academic at the University of Wollongong in Australia. I have heard a lot about Harambee. It has become very popular, and that is why I have decided to record this lecture.

It focuses, as I said, on answering the question: at what level is Harambee most useful in social work and development? I would want to start by saying it is most useful at the societal level in social work and development, and I will give reasons for that.

What harambee means

The definition I will share, the source is the Dictionary of Social Work and Development found on the Mtandao website, defines harambee as a value of collective action in which people come together to address all of society’s challenges. I would want to underline all of society’s challenges. Any action that is considered to be harambee should have the ultimate objective of feeding into society, improving society, and addressing social challenges and issues. The goal is beyond the individual, it is beyond the family, it is beyond the community. It is about benefiting the whole of society.

In short, harambee means societal, or coming together to address whole-of-society problems. The goal of Harambee is larger than the group, larger than the community and also larger than the institution. That is challenging, especially considering that we have often been told harambee is about you and me, it is about small groups, it is about what happens in the village or the community. In this lecture, I am emphasising that harambee’s focus is the societal. It becomes more useful in social work and development if we focus on the societal rather than on the smaller, or micro, levels of society.

Levels of social work and development

It is important to remind ourselves about the levels at which development work and social work happen. It happens at three levels, as we have seen in various textbooks used in teaching.

Social work and development appears at the micro level, that is where you work with individuals on a case-to-case basis, but also with families or small groups.

It also appears at the meso level, that is where community development and community organisation lies. You can also be working with large groups, and there are institutional approaches that fall under this middle ground in the learning and practice of social work and development.

Then the larger level is the macro level, that is when you look at society as a whole, and I will talk a bit later about what society means when it comes to harambee. The macro level is where you deal with all-of-society issues.

The origin of Harambee

We have often been told, and it is a myth that has been discredited, that harambee came from the Hindu language, which is the major language of India and other countries. That theory has been discredited.

The theory I am proposing is that harambee, of course, comes from the Swahili language, but the Swahili language is a collection of several other languages, including Arabic and my own language, which is Shona. In Shona, harambee means no one refuses. That brings in the whole-of-society approach, no one is excluded, everyone is included. In harambee, everyone is included. No one can refuse to be part of society. You are part of that society, you belong to it, and if a programme comes, a harambee programme, everyone should be benefiting from it or involved in it.

That is my thesis: harambee is derived from Shona. Shona is one of the languages that, together with other languages, was put together to create the Swahili language as we know it today. To emphasise, there is a myth around the origin of harambee, and the myth that it came from the Hindu language has been discredited.

Harambee in Kenya

We know that harambee has been used extensively in Kenya. That is where it was popularised, by former President Jomo Kenyatta, when he called for society to pull together. Villages, communities, and suburbs were pulled together for the benefit of Kenya as a society, and again, underlining the focus here: for the benefit of Kenya as a society. Work could have happened at the community level, at the village level, at the suburb level, at the institutional level, but ultimately the benefit was for Kenya as a society.

Harambee within Ubuntu

Harambee does not stand alone. It is an Ubuntu value, one of the values within Ubuntu. The other values are Ukama, which is about relationships; ujamaa, which is about community; umvelo, which is about the environment; and uroho, which is about the spiritual and the moral. Harambee is not an island when it comes to African understanding or African knowledge. It is part of a larger knowledge system, the African worldview. In short, Ubuntu broadly says I am because we are. But when it comes to harambee, we would say we act as one, for all. That is really crucial in understanding harambee as one of the values of Ubuntu.

What is the societal level

If harambee is most useful at the societal level, and if this is what we should promote in social work and development, it is really important that we understand what the societal level is. In short, it is the broadest human collective, the entire body of people who share a common political, institutional, and structural existence. It encompasses individuals, groups, institutions, governments, and systems held together by common norms, laws, and governance.

There are different levels of society. We can talk about a kingdom as a society, a level of society which could be the same as a nation, an emirate, or a sultanate. We can look at a nation such as Somalia or Mauritius as a society. We can also look at ECOWAS, SADC, or the East African Community as a society. We can look at Africa, Asia, or Europe as a society. We can also look at the whole globe, our whole existence, as society. These are the different levels of society.

Society versus community

We also need to think about what is society and what is community, the differences between the two. Society means the whole, all people. A community is a specific part of society: for example, one or more villages, suburbs, towns, a kebele, a parish, or a ward. Society is at the macro level; community is at the meso level.

Often we say it is harambee when it is about society. When it is just community on its own, I hesitate to call it harambee, because it is not feeding into society. But if the community is doing something for the benefit of society, then it becomes harambee. This framework helps us figure out whether something is harambee or not, whether it contributes at the societal level.

A framework for identifying Harambee

If an action contributes at the societal level, that is harambee. Not every action is harambee for the purposes of social work and development. If it is carried out at the societal level with all of society involved, that is harambee. If it is aimed at developing society, that is harambee. Whether it is done at the micro or meso level, if the intention is to contribute to society, then that is harambee.

Conversely, if an action is done for individuals or for a specific group of people, not for the benefit of society, we cannot call it harambee. If it does not meet this threshold, contributing at the societal level, being carried out at the societal level, developing society as a whole, then it is not harambee. Harambee begins where the whole of society is both the urgency of action and the measure of success.

Examples of Harambee at the societal level

There are many examples. Here are some:

• The UN Sustainable Development Goals, whole of society, that is harambee
• The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), societal, African harambee
• Development and use of the Africa Disability Protocol, that is harambee
• A borderless or passportless SADC or ECOWAS, that is harambee
• A programme to improve a king or chief’s laws to prevent early marriages in that society, that is harambee
• Advocating for a national law against gender-based violence for everyone in that society, that is harambee
• A national land reform programme to decolonise, that is harambee
• A national household or village development plan that feeds into the whole of society, that is harambee
• IFSW, IASSW, and ICSW coming together to challenge the global climate change crisis or to stop wars, that is harambee
• Umuganda, the national mandatory community service day in Rwanda and other East African countries, whole of society, that is harambee
• A global or national slavery reparations framework, that is harambee

There are many other examples in education reform, anti-corruption work, constitutional justice for Indigenous peoples, and national pension and social security programmes. Think about the level at which they are happening and what they are targeting to achieve. If it is the whole of society, if it improves things at the societal level, that becomes Hharambee.

Why this matters for social work and development

It is really important for us in social work and social development to be using the harambee language at the societal level so that we have a language for it. In most cases, we talk about social work at the individual level, at the community level, at the family level, and we do not talk enough about social work at the institutional or societal level. Yet that is where there are greater opportunities for justice to happen at the whole-of-society level, for everyone to be involved, and for everyone to contribute and commit to development at the whole-of-society level.

More importantly, interventions at the harambee level, which I want to equate to social development, have a higher rate of success if well managed, because they target more people and use resources available to the nation or society for the benefit of everyone. I am thinking about the social justice goals of taking a whole-of-society approach.

Summary

In summary, harambee is one of the values of Ubuntu. The other values are Ukama, Ujamaa, Umvelo, and Uroho. Harambee sits in the middle. It represents the value of society.

These may come as new ideas to some people. You may feel provoked or challenged. That is what we do at the Africa Social Work and Development Network, at Mtandao, we create and aggregate knowledge that advances Africa’s standpoints. Harambee is one of them. We do not want harambee to be limited to work that happens at the group level or community level. We want it to be scaled up to deal with issues at the societal level. That is where it sits, that is where it is most useful, and that is where it is most beneficial for social work and development interventions, not only in Africa, but globally.

I invite you to join the debate on creating knowledge that is relevant to the African situation, developing knowledge that is from Africa, but not only benefiting Africa, globally, such as what we see in harambee. And challenging narratives that limit African knowledge to the basics.

uHarambee, one of the values of Ubuntu, sitting at the societal level, and there it is most useful in social work and development.

Disclaimer

This presentation was produced with the assistance of AI tools. Claude AI was used to structure the content, that was original content that I structured using Claude AI. ChatGPT was used to generate the Ubuntu image. The process was not an easy one. It involved multiple rounds of prompting, correcting, as AI can make mistakes, and review. I take full accountability for the work that I have shared with you that was AI-prompted and generated.