Incompleteness and the ethics of new and emerging health technologies: fostering African conversations on relational ontology, epistemic justice and academic activism

Grantholders

  • Dr Jantina De Vries

    University of Cape Town, South Africa

  • Prof Francis Nyamnjoh

    University of Cape Town, South Africa

Project summary

In this research development programme, we bring together African scholars in the humanities to consider ethical challenges in new and emerging health technologies from African perspectives. In striving to build a community of African scholars excited by the possibilities of our technological future, we prioritise conviviality - meaning living together in a world of kindness where everybody belongs. We do not assume that anybody knows best but that everybody has something important to contribute to our imagined future.

Our vision is to lead a community of African scholars to critically look at how African worldviews and lived experiences inform on thinking about these technologies in ways that we have not yet imagined. We do this by looking at three main topics, namely: African understandings of personhood and community; exploring what kind of diversity matters for bioethics and what is ignored; and thinking about an obligation towards activism in bioethics.