This is the 27th post in a blog series to be published in 2021 by the Secretariat on behalf of the AU High-Level Panel on Emerging Technologies (APET) and the Calestous Juma Executive Dialogues (CJED)

Considerations of innovation and emerging technologies have gained significant attention and traction across the African continent. As such, Africa has observed increased innovation and emerging technology outputs for socio-economic development. This includes the utilisation of drone technology in the transportation of medicine and other medical supplies to inaccessible Africa; artificial intelligence-enabled drones for disaster management and precision agriculture; digitisation of transportation management systems; biotechnology and bioengineering of crops, vegetables, produce, and animals; nanotechnology for water treatment and drug delivery; and advances on neurotechnology. Thus, emerging technologies are progressively providing socio-economic solutions and options to Africa’s developmental challenges.

There is the need for African countries to strengthen their ethical, legal, and regulatory systems towards evidence-based adoption of emerging technologies at continental, regional, and national levels. To support this need, APET engaged continental experts in consultative meetings to explore Africa’s ethical considerations and options for responsible STI-enabled socio-economic development and growth. This blog highlights the need for these consultations and progress.

Ethics in STI are a set of principles based on societal acceptability, cultural and religious beliefs on the best conduct that can be observed and adhered to when developing and implementing innovation and emerging technologies. Ethics can be utilised to understand and resolve moral issues pertaining to the development and application of innovation and emerging technologies under varied societal constraints and respect shared beliefs. Fundamentally, ethics are a bedrock of STI-related activity that can help African societies best develop trust towards developing and implementing technologies in Africa. Ethics in STI enables the development of responsible scientific activities in African communities to address their challenges in the most responsible and sustainable manner.[1]

Upon realising the importance and relevance of ethics in harnessing innovation and emerging technologies across the African continent, the African High-Level Panel on Innovation and Emerging Technologies (APET) through the Calestous Juma Executive Dialogue (CJED) platform facilitated discussions on STI ethics in Africa. These consultative meetings were conducted with ethicists drawn from across the African continent on the 5th of May and 29th of June 2021

The discussions and deliberations also explored the role of ethics when harnessing innovation and emerging technologies in Africa. This included Africa’s strengths, gaps, and opportunities available on STI-enabling ethics across the continent. Furthermore, the roundtable meeting deliberated on ascertaining ethics opportunities that could enable interventions and enhance Africa’s strategic, continental, and organisational infrastructure in science, innovation, and emerging technologies. Such deliberations could enable APET to develop a report offering guidelines and policy recommendations to African countries on STI-related ethical issues.

African ethicists underscored that harnessing STI-related socio-economic development should ensure trust between end-users and innovators of emerging technologies. Such ethical considerations can enable innovators to advance STI-related activities within a safe and respectful environment. This is essential because, without trust, emerging technologies cannot be exploited and adopted fully by Africans. Furthermore, STI-related ethics should enable STI-based socio-economic development rather than hinder innovation and emerging technologies across the African continent. In addition, STI-related ethics should support and help innovators predict, identify, and circumvent unexpected technology implementation challenges and exploit arising opportunities.

African innovators need to communicate and articulate ethical values to innovation and emerging technology end-users. This includes improving end-users’ understanding of the implications of abusing emerging technologies based on societal norms and values of African communities. In addition, ethics should be relevant such that ethical frameworks contextualise the cultural, historical, economic, and political realities of the African people. This can be accomplished by advocating for responsive and respectful ethical frameworks towards Africa’s local social, economic, and cultural norms. Thus, ethics would help African innovators understand the requirements necessary to create mutually beneficial relationships with local, national, regional, continental, and international stakeholders. Strategic ethical frameworks can potentially create the moral capital necessary for the adoption and adaptation of emerging technologies within African society. However, this is only possible if African innovators are dependable, reliable, and cooperative – these skills are essential to the socio-economic success of the African continent.

Ethics experts further indicated that the continent’s youthful generation enables an easier understanding of ethical issues with respect to STI-related socio-economic development. Notably, Africa’s youth remain profoundly cognizant of the need for ethics conducive towards enabling innovation efforts and adopting emerging technologies. As such. Africans remain significantly committed to their unique set of cultural values. Such ethical values offer critical and vital guidance when implementing and adapting emerging technologies and scientific innovation within the African context. Notably, African ethicists are in a good position to develop Africa’s ethical frameworks because of their valuable awareness of the African societal norms and values. Consequently, such can make it easy for African ethicists to offer informed and acceptable ethical guidance during Africa’s implementation of STI-related socio-economic development and growth.

It was also noted that the ethics gaps and needs across the African continent are currently hindering the application of ethics when harnessing innovation and emerging technologies. These gaps included the limited digital database hub essential for disseminating policy and regulatory guidelines aligned with STI-related ethics. Thus, developing such a hub can be vital towards enabling the harmonisation of ethical considerations at the African Union level. Most importantly, Africa’s these hubs can be patterned according to Africa’s Centre of Diseases Control (CDC) clinical trials structures created to harmonise Africa’s diseases and pandemic responses.

Unfortunately, some African scientists and innovators regard ethics as a barrier against harnessing innovation and emerging technologies. Consequently, ethical considerations turn to be applied to a limited set of innovations in medical research and subsequently limited in comprehensive innovation across a wider STI spectrum. Furthermore, African ethical practices are often derived and associated with religious traditions and norms and sometimes lack evidence-based scientific development. On top of that, there are limited capacity strengthening and training of ethical frameworks in Africa. For example, most African schools do not include ethical studies in the curricula, more especially in primary school and secondary school levels, as well as tertiary education levels. Notably, the African public, community leaders, and STI-related researchers have limited exposure to ethical practices and their transformative potential on innovation.

Therefore, experts recommended that APET and the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD) facilitate harmonising Africa’s strategic policy development aimed at comprehensive ethical programmes across the continent. This can be accomplished through the creation of a centralised and continental body on ethics. This continental body can serve as a platform for collecting, sharing, organising ethical programmes, policies, and guidelines for the African continent. Moreover, the continental body could also project the unified voice of African ethicists globally. Furthermore, the body can be modelled from existing ethics networks to enable STI-related socio-economic advancements. It was further proposed that the body should adopt a regional-based approach, rather than a continental body, to effectively address Africa’s unique social, political, and economic diversities and realities. In addition, Africa should conduct a mandate finding survey to enable effective and diversified stakeholder engagements on the state of Africa’s ethics across the continent.

In conclusion, ethics experts recommended that a continental body be established on ethics, and an APET report should be developed to cover all STI-related ethics for the African continent. The APET report will also explore the current landscape of the continent’s STI-related ethics on the continent. This will include addressing the African continent’s ethical gaps, needs, and opportunities. The APET report will also provide an overview of Africa’s ethical history detailing the development of ethics across the continent from pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial times. Furthermore, the APET report will highlight the best practice of ethics in Africa, more especially on STIs and emerging technologies. It will also guide how ethical practices within African countries can be grounded in comprehensive stakeholder and community engagements and their comparison to the global stage.

Per these deliberations and other related consultations, Africa can responsibly and sustainably achieve STI-based socio-economic development and accomplish the AU’s Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want.

To access the recording of this webinar or be included in future webinars of the Calestous Juma Executive Dialogue, please send an email to barbarag@nepad.org.

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[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4456506/.