To address the paucity of African feminist ethical theory, it asks: how do ìtọ́jú, ìkẹ́, and ìgẹ̀ pan out in various care contexts such as ikẹ́ọmọdé (child care), ikẹ́arúgbó (care for the aged), ìkẹ́ òbí (parental care), ìtọ́jú aláìsàn (care for the sick), ìtọ́jú agbèegbè (environmental care), ìgẹ̀ ọkọ (care for the husband), ìgẹ̀ àgbàlagbà (care for the elderly), and so forth? Ìtọ́jú encompasses simple care or nurture.
Category: Archive
African Feminist Ethics of Co-creation: Researching Women’s Peacemaking in the Democratic Republic of Congo
During my interactions with the interviewees, they questioned me about my life as they assessed whether to share their hidden narratives, long invisibilised in academic and governmental archives.
Feminisms that Feed Us: African Feminist Ethics, Everyday Resistance, and the Futures of Development
Exploring how women collectively resist alienation entails identifying contextual practices of resistance rooted in shared histories, cultures, and values which African feminisms emphasise. By attending to the material and kinship economies that sustain life, I position grassroots women’s organising as a crucial site for reimagining futures.
Of Place and Space: Towards a Phenomenological Foundation for African Feminist Ethics
Given that phenomenology deals with subjective experiences, I argue that a phenomenological approach, rooted in the lived experiences of African women, offers a unique and valuable perspective on ethical issues relevant to their lives.
Theorising African Feminist Ethics
Theorisation is important for problem identification, recognition of patterns and typologies, naming as well as for its impact on praxis such as social policy and action-research. These may take routes of induction, deduction and/or abstraction – as will be discussed later.
Feminist Africa 2025, Volume 6, Issue 3 “Theorising African Feminist Ethics”
Theorisation is important for problem identification, recognition of patterns and typologies, naming as well as for its impact on praxis such as social policy and action-research. These may take routes of induction, deduction and/or abstraction – as will be discussed later. It is in recognition of this that significant issues of Feminist Africa have engaged in revisiting, theorising and rethinking concepts, systems and structures that normalise all forms of oppression
“Here, I Am His Mother”: Unqueering Gender Relations and Identities through African Kinship Etymologies
he theorisation of exploitative and dangerous systems such as patriarchy or colonialism has long been energised by the complex and evolving connections among gender, violence, and power. Research and activism that acknowledge such connections point to ways in which these systems often create normalised conditions of vulnerability, especially for people gendered within the “feminine.” Such theorisation has arisen most influentially in political work within civil societies that prioritises narratives of “abuse against women” as a starting point for redress, resistance, and revolution. The overwhelming focus on such abuses in African contexts has remained, however, on domestic violence and sexual assault. In the past decade, the focus has also increasingly include
Feeling and Finding: An Exploration of the Self, Sensuality and Sexuality for African Women in Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah’s The Sex Lives of African Women
he theorisation of exploitative and dangerous systems such as patriarchy or colonialism has long been energised by the complex and evolving connections among gender, violence, and power. Research and activism that acknowledge such connections point to ways in which these systems often create normalised conditions of vulnerability, especially for people gendered within the “feminine.” Such theorisation has arisen most influentially in political work within civil societies that prioritises narratives of “abuse against women” as a starting point for redress, resistance, and revolution. The overwhelming focus on such abuses in African contexts has remained, however, on domestic violence and sexual assault. In the past decade, the focus has also increasingly include
The Discomfort around Knowledge Authority – Multiple Feminist Readings of Minna Salami’s Sensuous Knowledge
he theorisation of exploitative and dangerous systems such as patriarchy or colonialism has long been energised by the complex and evolving connections among gender, violence, and power. Research and activism that acknowledge such connections point to ways in which these systems often create normalised conditions of vulnerability, especially for people gendered within the “feminine.” Such theorisation has arisen most influentially in political work within civil societies that prioritises narratives of “abuse against women” as a starting point for redress, resistance, and revolution. The overwhelming focus on such abuses in African contexts has remained, however, on domestic violence and sexual assault. In the past decade, the focus has also increasingly include
Cross-Continental Dialogues: Custodians of the Hearth – Abagusii Women as Knowers Who Produce, Transmit and Recycle Ancestral Knowledge
he theorisation of exploitative and dangerous systems such as patriarchy or colonialism has long been energised by the complex and evolving connections among gender, violence, and power. Research and activism that acknowledge such connections point to ways in which these systems often create normalised conditions of vulnerability, especially for people gendered within the “feminine.” Such theorisation has arisen most influentially in political work within civil societies that prioritises narratives of “abuse against women” as a starting point for redress, resistance, and revolution. The overwhelming focus on such abuses in African contexts has remained, however, on domestic violence and sexual assault. In the past decade, the focus has also increasingly include