Unisa’s Office of Research Integrity, in collaboration with the Chief Albert Luthuli Research Chair and the Engaged Scholarship Tirisano Projects, hosted Prof Ike Iyioke from the Michigan State University (MSU) in the United States of America for the month of June 2023 as part of the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Programme.

Prof Ike Iyioke (Image credit: Michigan State University)

The programme focused on the umbrella theme of Indigenising research ethics. The fellowship and collaboration between these multi-stakeholders aimed to produce a long-term academic collaboration to generate research outputs, initiate policy change, raise awareness on indigenising research ethics, and host public lectures and dialogues.

On 23 June, Iyioke presented a public lecture entitled "Reframing health research ethics in Africa: What would it look like". Prof Thenjiwe Meyiwa, Unisa’s Vice-Principal: Research, Postgraduate Studies, Innovation and Commercialisation, started by contextualising Iyioke’s month-long visit to Unisa. She positioned the lecture within the spectrum of the university’s mandate of "reclaiming Africa’s intellectual futures" at turning 150 years old. She used the lecture, which was set as a round table discussion, as an allegory to a family seeking warmth around a fire. She then roused attendees to indigenise methodologies, and to empower and protect vulnerable communities. Prof Puleng Segalo, incumbent of the Chief Albert Luthuli Research Chair, eloquently responded to Iyioke’s presentation.

Glaring problems

Iyioke stated that the preceding seminars and dialogues had already proven that "the practice of research ethics in Africa has not served Africans". He expanded that in bioethics, "the history of research ethics has largely been Western". He explained that this is why bioethics' guiding principles and application have been Western-dominated and are "foreign to African societies". Iyioke posed the problem that Euro-Western ethical principles do not represent the human population and its various social or historical contexts.

He also problematised the individualism and individual autonomy highlighted by Euro-ancestry philosophies that form the foundations of bioethics frameworks. Some of these were by philosophers such as Emmanuel Kant, Ralph Emmerson and John Stewart Mill. These frameworks influenced research ethics principles such as "autonomy, non-malfeasance, malfeasance and justice" and the concept of consent. Iyioke further stated that in places like Africa, "incongruities emerge at the local level when this West-centric heritage fails to fit with community-oriented traditions", making an example of the idea of "personhood", which in its framing in the Euro-American sense, differs significantly from its African delineation.

Iyioke spoke of how the issue of appropriate standards in research in communities in the Global South remained controversial. Referring to decades-long debates among bioethicists, he made examples of "ethical imperialism" or "ethics dumping". These terms refer to "a continued approach to resolving specific research ethics issues using Western ideals even when they clearly do not respond to cultural and national circumstances across Africa". 

He said that in some quarters, the "imposition of Western values" as a sign of "having no respect for local communities and their cultural progress" had repeatedly been brought up. Even the issue of which "ethical standards ought to apply, those of Western investigators or local standards", had often surfaced.

Iyioke pointed out that one of the most recent and glaring evidence of deficiencies in medical and bioethics was the response to Covid-19. He explained that the pandemic proved that "Western ethical approaches, including concepts of fair allocation, do not meet the needs of African countries".

Nonetheless, he pointed out that the movement of cultural diversity in global bioethics has pushed for the recognition and respect of "various cultures and milieus, so that they can compose approaches suited to those contexts". Furthermore, this movement has recognised that "cultural autonomy requires an appreciation of cultural relativity" since "the individual and communal choices are shaped by the cultural environment".

Advocating for a "culturally sensitive research integrity protocol that would apply standard research ethics protocols while maintaining the African communal mantra", he found it crucial to establish and advance "an authentic framework of principles that would better address the cultural needs of Africans, local researchers and anyone who comes to conduct research in Africa". The advantage would be that researchers could tap into "interdisciplinary, cross-cultural and community-based participatory research".

The approach would move away from principles that use a one-size-fits-all approach, should not employ a Western prism, and should hinder cultural overreach. Iyioke held firm on the importance of particularism, insisting that bioethics "approaches ought to differ just like politics” and that “all ethics should be local".

Affirming African ways through Bio-Eco-Communalism (BEC)

After stating the problems, Iyioke proposed a framework called Bio-Eco-Communalism (BEC). The framework incorporates one-health, community-based-participatory research and a philosophy of feminist bioethics.

Importantly within the framework are African philosophical principles of the individual being inseparable from their community, physical and spiritual environment. The framework is tailored to the diversity and needs of the African cultural environment. It emphasises the health connections between humans, animals and the physical environment.

Iyioke maintained that this framework meets international practice standards and has theoretical and practical components. The framework is grounded in equity, cultural norms, community and an understanding of personhood that is not individualistic.

Tying his proposal to curbing the erasure of Africa’s contribution to modernity, as often portrayed by the West, Iyioke suggested that eliminating colonial norms could assist in changing the narrative around the continent’s "capability towards invention". He found it essential to affirm that Africans also own knowledge and should not seek validation from elsewhere, especially in many cases of what he called "helicopter research" or "parachute development projects", which further colonial perspectives and "power imbalances".

About acknowledging Africa’s ownership of knowledge, he stated that he was pleased with the steps MSU has taken towards equitable partnership in international collaboration, and he looks forward to the university adopting the policy in all types of international collaborative activities with MSU. He said the policy "would both guide and hold her actions accountable" at internal levels, including faculty, staff and students in interfacing with international external stakeholders. 

Response and discussion

In her response, Segalo related the presentation to the university’s objectives towards indigenising and Africanising research ethics, and reimagining Africa’s purpose and future. She relayed how MSU’s stance on international collaborations is encouraging since Unisa also has a strategic project which aims to rethink research collaborations in the Global-North-Africa region. The charter, she announced, looks at epistemic justice and a "shared Africa-centred framework". Segalo also showed how Iyioke’s presentation complemented the activities of the Chief Albert Luthuli Research Chair in highlighting the ethical leadership of Chief Luthuli as an intellectual of the continent and the relevance of spirituality in African society.

Segalo drew parallels between injustices done in the name of ethics with those in Australian Chelsea Watego’s book, Another Day in the Colony. In the book, colonialism remains locked in the psyches and bodies of indigenous Aboriginal people just as it lingers within and among Africans, Segalo submitted. Watego is concerned about undoing an unjust narrative within the health sciences. This narrative portrays Aboriginal bodies as sick, tragic, irresponsible about their health, and therefore "underserving of healthcare". The narrative gives form to a native pathologised for not being white.

Segalo appealed to attendees to consider how the education system reinforces these misconceptions about black bodies. She spoke of the harm "our academic disciplines" cause as they "theorise and make meaning of these experiences" or the lens our research uses when "pathologising" those in our communities. Such framing, she offered, unfortunately makes its way to the development of policies around our communities, proving how research and research ethics are "a political act".

On the problematic nature of the "assumed universalism" of ethics principles, she requested attendees to critique Euro-Western ethics principles and to imagine African-centred ethics principles. She discussed how "ethics principles centred in an African cosmology and African history" are necessary.

Within her dialogue with Iyioke’s presentation, Segalo recommended that researchers who focus on the "homegrown" do not have to look away from the global arena but should work on "always prioritising the local" or African ways of knowing, doing and being. She found it paramount to work from the ethics of care.

Iyioke’ visit was the beginning of what Unisa hopes will be a long-term collaboration that will lead to joint research projects, and extend scholarship through teaching and learning, e-scholarship and research. The collaborators envisage establishing a winter school focusing on Indigenising research ethics.

* Submitted by the Chief Albert Luthuli Research Chair