Yoruba Moral Philosophy and the Ethical Governance of Data Science Health Research in Africa
Bibliographic Data
Data science health research (DSHR) which encompasses genomic biobanking, algorithmic clinical prediction, large‐scale secondary use of health data, and AI‐assisted diagnostics is expanding rapidly across Africa through initiatives such as the Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa) consortium and the Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa (DS‐I Africa) program. Existing ethical governance frameworks based on Western principlism, Ubuntu‐based bioethics, and the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance each capture part of the ethical terrain for governance of DSHR in Africa but gaps remain. In this paper, we apply a Yoruba moral philosophical framework, developed in a companion paper, to the five central challenges of DSHR governance in Yoruba communities: informed consent in big‐data contexts, algorithmic fairness, data sovereignty, secondary use of health data, and AI clinical decision support. Drawing on the six Yoruba moral principles that extend principlism including procedural communal deliberation ( Ifọgbọntáayésé ), moderate‐communitarian relational personhood, virtue‐based character ethics ( Ìwà/Omolúàbí ), intergenerational kinship obligations ( Àjọbí ), sacred‐epistemic confidentiality ( Awo ), and restorative‐adjudicative justice ( Ìlàjà ), we demonstrate that each generates concrete, operationalizable governance recommendations that exceed what principlism, Ubuntu‐bioethics, or CARE Principles supply individually. We present a comprehensive governance framework with specific institutional mechanisms: Community Data Stewardship Councils, tiered consent with lineage‐level governance, Omolúàbí‐ informed researcher assessment, ẹbọ ‐based benefit‐sharing, Awo ‐governed data classification, and ìlàjà restorative harm remediation. The framework positions Yoruba moral philosophy as one voice in a principled pluralism for the ethical governance of DSHR in Africa. It is designed to operate within, not alongside, the harmonized procedures and instruments, supplying locally grounded moral content at the points where those instruments require community engagement but leave its form unspecified. It is not a replacement for existing approaches but a substantive addition to the current governance landscape.
algorithmic fairness · benefit sharing · CARE principles · data sovereignty · H3Africa · principlism · relational personhood · Restorative justice · secondary use of health data · Ethics and bioethics in healthcare · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · Ethics in Clinical Research
Indigenous Data Sovereignty
The Care Principles for Indigenous Data Governance
The Fair Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship
Dissecting racial bias in an algorithm used to manage the health of populations
Towards an Ọmọlúàbí code of research ethics
Genomics governance
Genomics and Health Data Governance in Africa
Traditional Yoruba Social-Ethical Values and Governance in Modern Africa
‘It is an entrustment’
The benefit sharing vision of H3Africa
Toward an African Moral Theory
Èṣù and ethics in the Yorùbá world view
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