At the heart of uncritical, un-decolonised, white western social work practice in Africa lies a premise, a narrative, an authority and a process of moralisation that legitimises the whiteness and universalism of western practice as standard in African spaces. As the white outsider assumes the role of “saving” the poor and the unfortunate Africans from their “oppressed” realities, they inadvertently position Africans as passive, helpless, and powerless victims who lack agency. This imperialistic and paternalistic approach features prominently in social work practice in African countries and reinforces a universalising and infantilising rhetoric that reiterates colonial “single story” narratives of Africa and Africans (Adichie, 2009).
By summoning a post-colonial theorisation, I will problematise the colonised and whitewashed social work education and practice in Africa, and Kenya more specifically. This will be achieved by examining various indigenous ways of social work practice in Africa and implications of their erasure while also probing how western epistemologies in present-day social work have intensified the “white saviour” and the “single story” discourse, consequently creating a conundrum- a contradiction- and an oxymoronic complexity for anti-oppressive social work practice in post-colonial Africa.