THE SIGNIFICANCE OF AFRICAN INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE IN BIOETHICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS

Abstract

This article explores the significance of African Indigenous Knowledge (AIK) in enriching contemporary discourses in bioethics and environmental ethics. Through a philosophical and hermeneutical approach, it examines how indigenous conceptions of personhood, morality, and the environment from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and Cameroon articulate a relational and community-based moral order. The study employs comparative philosophical analysis, drawing on both oral traditions and recent ethnophilosophical literature to reveal how AIK offers coherent ethical positions that challenge dominant Western paradigms of individualism and anthropocentrism. The findings indicate that African conceptions of ethics emphasise interdependence between humans, non-human beings, and the spiritual dimension of existence. In bioethics, this view underpins practices of communal healthcare responsibility and respect for the sanctity of life as a collective good rather than a private right. In environmental ethics, AIK promotes ecological balance through moral obligations to land, ancestors, and future generations. Case studies from rural Nigerian healthcare practices, Ghanaian herbal traditions, Kenyan sacred groves, and Cameroonian forest stewardship reveal ethical systems that sustain both human wellbeing and environmental integrity. The article concludes that integrating AIK into global ethical deliberations fosters a more inclusive and pluralistic moral discourse, capable of addressing bioethical dilemmas and ecological degradation through holistic and culturally grounded reasoning.