Greetings to you, fellow Ugandans.
This letter is in relation to the reported comments made by His Excellency the President of Uganda on May 1, 2026, and earlier, regarding the social work courses in Uganda. First, we would like to recognize the president’s concern and interest in the development of our country. Secondly, we empathize with the President because of the pressure we think he goes through as a leader of a country with a youth unemployment rate of 17.9 per cent and working age unemployment rate at 12.2 per cent (UBOS 2025). Thirdly, we empathize with the President because we have a situation where you have a popular course whose contribution to the country’s economic development is unclear.
Empathizing with the President, however, does not necessarily mean that we totally agree with his views on the relevance and value of social work in Uganda. First, social work is a global profession whose relevance is well known.
Indeed, it is because of this that the colonial government introduced it to Uganda (Twikirize et al. 2019). Secondly, there is no supporting evidence to prove that the majority of the unemployed youth and persons in Uganda studied to be social workers. Although the government of Uganda employs very few social workers, the majority of social work graduates find employment in the Civil Society Organisations that have dominated the country’s social sector.
Thirdly, social work is an applied social science, and thus has immediate application value towards resolving many social problems and conditions that affect our country, e.g., violence, child abuse, social economic empowerment, food security, community mobilization. Social Work is different from History, Literature, etc., therefore, should not be confused with them. These disciplines are concerned with different issues from social work’s concerns.
Fellow Ugandans, the President is not the first person to question the relevance and value of social work. Jordan (2007) records similar scepticism about social work in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. However, we must approach the discussions and analysis of the value and relevance of social work in two ways.
First, viewing human life as full of cyclic life vulnerabilities, risks, and shocks. It is with such a recognition that the government of Uganda in 2015 developed a progressive social protection policy and has a social development agenda within its National Development Plan IV of 2024/26-2029/2030. These are progressive plans because of their vision, mission statements and guiding principles. They centre on principles of universalism and inclusiveness, with the aspiration to protect every Ugandan from life cycle risks, vulnerabilities, and shocks that may arise from one’s age, gender, ability, employment, income, etc.
These life cycle risks, vulnerabilities, and shocks are addressed through social security services (i.e., social assistance and social insurance), social care, and social support services.
Social workers majorly deliver the social care and support services, and social work professionals offer complementary roles in the broader social services as well. It is the social workers who work with children in conflict with the law, youths and adults suffering from addictions, children at risk of being trafficked, child labour, sexual exploitation, domestic violence, children in need of alternative care, people with disabilities, etc. It is only through the social care and social support services that the vulnerable, poor, and disadvantaged people and communities are empowered, mobilized, and galvanized to participate in the country’s development processes and programs.
The President’s comments about the uselessness of social work arose from his concern over the mismatch between academic training and the economic needs of the country. Concerns about the economic development of the country are commendable. However, the President seems to focus on the material economy (production of goods) of the country while ignoring the interpersonal economy, which some scholars sometimes refer to as the social care economy, relational economy or emotional economy.
The interpersonal/emotional economy is an economy of relationships and feelings (Jordan 2007) as well as social capital, communal capital, and collective social assets. Unlike the material economy that produces tangible goods, the emotional/interpersonal economy produces intangible, but real, goods and services. The goods include love, friendship, support, empathy, solidarity, feelings, companionship, morale, morality, healing, communality, harmony, happiness, recognition, regard, trust, etc.
In an economy, there should be production, exchange, and consumption of the produced goods. In the interpersonal/emotional economy, the primary producers of these goods are social workers and para-social workers. This is because social work is a relationship-based profession. The consumers of these goods are those experiencing life cycle risks, vulnerabilities, and shocks that the social protection policy aims at protecting.
Fellow Ugandans, the interpersonal/emotional economy has intrinsic value and instrumental value for the material economy (Gui and Sugden 2005). About the instrumental value, we have a concept of emotional labour, that is, labour that engages in production (Gui 2000). The concept of emotional labour focuses on the emotional state of labour.
Take an example of domestic violence. A person is not able to effectively participate in the production of material goods when he/she is a victim of domestic violence. Neither can a family engage in material production when there is family conflict. The instrumental value is not only in relation to production but also to consumption. For example, people tend to pay for material goods based on the emotions they are experiencing (Gui and Sugden, 2005). Therefore, we also have emotional consumers.
The country needs to start the processes of economization of the interpersonal/emotional economy (social care sector). This involves marketization, price setting, and market design and maintenance of the social care sector (Bandelj 2026). Indeed, we have countries within the region that have started on the processes of economization of the care work. Thus, if we consider the interpersonal/emotional economy (i.e., the social goods stated above) and their economization, then as a country, we need to also appreciate the value and relevance of social work in the national economy. This is very urgent since the kinship relations that partly provide the social care and support goods and services are on a decline, as the social protection policy (2015) notes.
In conclusion, we should take the President’s comments about the relevance of the social work profession in Uganda as an opportunity to have honest discussions and conversations about Uganda’s social sector. This conversation and these discussions should specifically focus on how the growth of the interpersonal/emotional economy contributes to the overall national development strategy. Furthermore, the conversations should be on how to strengthen the social sector to better support Ugandans going through life cycle risks, shocks, and vulnerabilities, and how this contributes to human improvement to grab economic opportunities.
Discussions and conversations should be on how to increase the funding/investment in the interpersonal/emoticon economy, thereby increasing access to social protection services, especially the social care and social support services. In addition, we can explore ways of making a social protection law, similar to one enacted by Kenya in 2025, so that social protection becomes a right to all Ugandans who experience life cycle risks, shocks and vulnerabilities. We should also make a law that regulates the social workers and para-social workers who are the major providers of social care and social support services.