**Author details**

*Global Social Work - Cutting Edge Issues and Critical Reflections*

*6.1.2 Consider diversity, history, and contemporary realities*

*6.1.3 Pay attention to local realities—rural-based life*

population of Africa that must be taken into account [41].

*6.1.4 Facilitate learning within the continent of Africa and beyond*

flow of knowledge from the "global south" to the "North" and "West."

Higher learning institutions in Africa should take the initiative to create a platform where they share indigenous knowledge and practices through intracontinental exchange programs for African faculty. Specifically, they should revise the curricula, produce indigenous text books, and draft publications to share with the rest of the world [2]. These beginnings will make a space for reciprocity in the

Silliote and Marzano [25] and Midgely [24, 40] argue that the perpetuation of inappropriate policies and programs is partly due to the failure of politicians and policymakers to realize the complexity of development and the contextual nature of problems, which vary across culture and history. There is no tailor-made or generic

Therefore, acknowledging indigenous wisdom and incorporating the voices of the grassroots in policies and programs will provide us a different perspective and sustainable solution to issues related to development. We must empower people to articulate their problems and contribute their share in solving those problems since only they live with them in a given sociocultural and economic context. In this manner, indigenous approaches will serve as an intersection bringing policy,

Indigenous approaches are crucial for Africans to assess the impact of imperialism and its manifestation in colonialism, liberalism, globalization, and Western forms of research. Continued reliance on the Western model and policies that are

similar results [25, 39, 40].

Indigenous approaches consider diversity, history, and contemporary realities [39]. Africa is a culturally diverse continent [6, 30]. Cultural and linguistic difference exists even within a country. For example, the languages spoken in Ethiopia are more than 80; in Nigeria, 250; Ghana, 76; South Africa, 23; and Botswana, 28 [6]. Religion and spirituality also play significant roles in individual and communal life [6, 29]. Thus, in the search for indigenous knowledge and applying indigenous approaches, it is important to pay attention to varying social structures and patterns of communication. Secular approaches that ignore these cultural nuances do not effectively address socioeconomic problems. In indigenous approaches, there is no standard policy and/or program to be used and universally replicated, yielding

Social work education, research, and practice in Africa must pay particular attention to local realities of the communities, most of which reside in rural areas and operate in a collectivist culture. The World Bank data (2018) shows that the rural population of Sub-Saharan Africa is 645 million and it is projected to be 702 million by 2025. Rural economies, and those who reside in rural areas, have largely been disregarded when developing national development priorities [41]. Regardless of the exponential growth of cities and increasing rural urban migration in the developing world, the rural communities will continue to harbor a significant proportion of the

**10**

**7. Conclusion**

"solution" to problems.

intervention, and grassroots together.

Aissetu Barry Ibrahima Social Work Department, Northeastern Illinois University, USA

\*Address all correspondence to: a-ibrahima@neiu.edu

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
