Literature within social work on African-centered frameworks that can be used to inform research and social work practice has remained limited. Often discussion of African centered frameworks relies solely on broad, generalized models of the African centered worldview. Such limited discussion of African-centered approaches is problematic as it discounts both the diversity of African perspectives of human development, and limits the exploration of models from an African perspective, which may be a more appropriate and effective approach to working with Black youth populations. To assist in addressing this gap within social work literature, the current article critically compares the human developmental schemes of three indigenous African worldviews, and identifies potential implications for positive youth development. The process of assessing and comparing each respective worldview through the perspective of youth development yields insights that are important for both theory and practice. The paper also provides implications for African-centered program development, particularly in considering the need to acknowledge the intersectionality of Black youth identities.

可用于为研究和社会工作实践提供信息的以非洲为中心的框架的社会工作文献仍然有限。通常，对以非洲为中心的框架的讨论完全依赖于以非洲为中心的世界观的广泛、概括的模型。这种对以非洲为中心的方法的有限讨论是有问题的，因为它既忽视了非洲人类发展视角的多样性，又限制了从非洲视角探索模型，这可能是与黑人青年合作的更合适和有效的方法。为了帮助解决社会工作文献中的这一差距，本文批判性地比较了三种非洲土著世界观的人类发展计划，并确定了对积极青年发展的潜在影响。从青年发展的角度评估和比较各个世界观的过程产生了对理论和实践都很重要的见解。该论文还提供了对以非洲为中心的计划发展的影响，特别是在考虑需要承认黑人青年身份的交叉性方面。