Digital Social Work Across Africa and Asia

Digital social work across Africa and Asia is examined here through a decolonial framework built for Global South practice. Mobile money is changing how welfare reaches the poor. Biometric identification governs access to social protection. Algorithmic systems make eligibility decisions about families. Mobile messaging coordinates community advocacy and disaster response. Practitioners in African and Asian contexts are not catching up to these developments. They are shaping them. Drawing on policy analysis, decolonial scholarship from both regions, and primary qualitative data from 234 frontline social workers, the authors treat Africa and Asia as a single intellectual landscape, with attention to mobile-first infrastructure, communal living, indigenous knowledge, multilingual societies, and post-colonial welfare states. Cases are drawn from Kenya, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Tanzania, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. Three framing contributions run through the book: the Asia-African Digital Justice Framework, Communal Digital Safeguarding for shared-device households, and the Shared Screen Dilemma in low-income environments. Chapters address the digital divide, data privacy and protection, algorithmic bias, mobile money and social protection, social media, crisis intervention, big data, telehealth, and indigenous innovation, closing with a framework for African and Asian social work education. Written for social work academics, researchers, graduate students, and policymakers.

Year

2026

Language

English

Publisher

Universitas Indonesia Publishing

Editions

3

Pages

154

ISBN

9786342442050

Data source: Wikidata