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This paper examines how Southeast Nigerian women in civil service articulate valued capabilities through negotiation, care, and everyday moral reasoning. Utilizing the Capability Approach and African feminism, the study shows how women's agency redefines development ethics beyond colonial paradigms.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how women in the civil service articulate valued capabilities related to labour market participation and how these shape an indigenous feminist ethics of development grounded in everyday moral reasoning. Using qualitative research with Southeast Nigerian women in the civil service, the analysis draws on Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach (Sen, 2004, 1999) and African feminist thought, particularly Nego-feminism (Nnaemeka, 2004), Motherism (Acholonu, 1995), and Snail-sense Feminism (Ezeigbo, 2012). The data reveal how women express what they value through narrated constraints, negotiated choices, and survival strategies within institutions that are formally protective yet informally unequal.

The findings show women value interrelated capabilities, including work–life balance, voice, education and career development, security, recognition, and relational support. Importantly, these capabilities are not framed as individualistic freedoms but as relational and moral achievements, shaped by care responsibilities, institutional power, and gendered norms. Women’s agency emerges through negotiation, strategic compliance, incremental resistance, and ethical self-management, challenging dominant development paradigms that equate agency with overt opposition or autonomy detached from social relations.

This paper argues these lived philosophies constitute an indigenous ethics of care that redefines development as the expansion of survivable, dignified participation rather than abstract empowerment. By foregrounding women’s everyday moral reasoning as epistemic labour, the study contributes to debates on epistemic justice and knowledge sovereignty in African development, demonstrating how African feminist epistemologies can enrich the Capability Approach by situating aspiration, adaptation, and agency within historically grounded, relational, and care-centred frameworks that move beyond colonial and patriarchal models of development.

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This paper argues that voice and knowledge transmission are deeply political practices for Malagasy women. Through orality, storytelling, intergenerational exchange, and creative expression, women turn everyday cultural practices into sites of political agency where formal spaces exclude them.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how Malagasy women engage politically through locally rooted and non-traditional practices. The paper argues that voice and knowledge transmission constitute deeply political practices. Women’s engagement emerges from culturally embedded forms of orality, intergenerational exchange, and creative expression, demonstrating how the personal, communal, and cultural intersect with political agency. Everyday practices, cultural expression, and intergenerational learning operate as vital modes of participation, asserting women’s presence, shaping discourse, and sustaining movements. The paper highlights how Malagasy women claim space, transmit knowledge, and sustain collective political consciousness in contexts where formal spaces of power often exclude them.

Orality structures social and political life. Slam poetry offers accessible and youth-oriented platforms for women to articulate local concerns, critique social norms, and connect with diverse audiences. Women further use public speaking and advocacy to influence legal debates, raise public awareness, and shape policy agendas. Social media enables women to influence broader audiences beyond traditional forms of speech.

Knowledge transmission is equally relevant. Women use both formal and informal gatherings to share experiences, educate peers, and collectively reflect on social and political challenges. Storytelling transforms personal experiences into collective awareness: narratives of resilience, professional achievement, or survival become resources for political inspiration and action. Artistic and cultural interventions, including performances, visual arts, and exhibitions, serve as tools to preserve heritage, reclaim erased histories, and reframe collective memory. These practices illustrate how preserving the self and community knowledge functions as political work, reinforcing collective identity and agency in subtle yet transformative ways.

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Foregrounding the voices of out-of-school adolescent girls in rural Zimbabwe, this paper exposes the limits of dominant development frameworks and shows how the Shona concept kuzviitira ('doing for oneself') embodies a relational and culturally grounded form of agency.

Paper long abstract

Dominant development discourses continue to frame girls’ empowerment through universalised, Eurocentric assumptions that equate formal schooling with agency, progress and moral worth. This paper offers a decolonial critique of these assumptions by centring the lived experiences of out-of-school adolescent girls in rural Zimbabwe. Drawing on qualitative data from semi-structured narrative interviews and participant-led photography with six girls aged 17 to 18 enrolled in a donor-funded vocational education and training (VET) programme, the paper examines how girls articulate agency, value, and aspiration within conditions of structural constraint.

The analysis brings Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach into dialogue with decolonial African feminist thought to foreground indigenous, relational understandings of agency. A central finding is the significance of the Shona concept kuzviitira – “doing things for oneself” - which participants used to express aspirations for autonomy, self-reliance, dignity, and the capacity to care for oneself and others. While the girls valued formal schooling and recognise its social and symbolic importance, most did not wish to return to school. Instead, they framed vocational skills training as a more meaningful and attainable pathway for achieving kuzviitira within their social and economic realities.

By treating kuzviitira as a form of African women's philosophy rather than merely an empirical finding, the paper challenges deficit-based representations of ‘marginalised’ girls and exposes how dominant education and development frameworks marginalise indigenous epistemologies of agency. It contends that centring African women's everyday moral reasoning is key to decolonising development ethics and imagining futures beyond colonial legacies.

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African women shape development through everyday authority often excluded by Eurocentric knowledge systems. Using interviews and the Yoruba concept of àṣẹ, this paper frames women’s practices as governance and proposes ethical ways to document and theorise them for feminist political theory.

Paper long abstract

African women have long shaped development at home, in communities, and across society. Their contributions include managing resources, resolving conflicts, guiding moral norms, and sustaining collective life. Much of this knowledge remains unwritten and is excluded from scholarship. This exclusion reflects Eurocentric frameworks and colonial legacies that define what counts as valid knowledge.

This paper examines African women’s knowledge as a form of authority expressed through àşę — the Yoruba concept of power, agency, and the ability to effect change. Drawing on interviews, oral narratives, and historical examples, we examine how Yoruba women exercise authority through everyday practices that sustain social order and organize communities. These practices are political and governing in nature, not merely cultural or domestic.

With these, this paper proposes approaches to document and theorize these knowledge while maintaining epistemic integrity. It outlines oral interviews, participatory research methods, community workshops, and indigenous philosophical frameworks. These strategies allow scholars to capture unwritten and oral knowledge without flattening or appropriating it. They also make these practices legible and citable in scholarship and policy.

By combining empirical examples with conceptual analysis, the paper advances feminist political theory and development studies. It challenges state-centric and Eurocentric accounts of power. It also highlights how African women’s everyday knowledge constitutes recognized authority and shapes collective outcomes. The paper argues that documenting and theorizing these knowledge is essential for epistemic justice and for rethinking development frameworks that historically exclude African women.

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Examines power & vulnerability in development via ethics of care. Argues for care-centered approach prioritizing relational accountability, challenging power hierarchies. Highlights care ethics reshaping development priorities & amplifying marginalized voices for equitable futures.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the intersection of power and vulnerability in development practices through the lens of ethics of care. In an era of global uncertainties, development interventions often exacerbate existing vulnerabilities, disproportionately impacting marginalized communities. The research critically interrogates how care manifests in development interventions and advocates for a care-centered approach acknowledging vulnerability as intrinsic to human experience. Drawing on care ethics and critical development studies, the paper argues that traditional power hierarchies can be challenged by prioritizing care and relational accountability.

The study explores practical implications for policy and practice, highlighting cases where care ethics have reshaped development priorities and amplified marginalized voices. Centering care can shift development from technocratic fixes toward nurturing sustainable, justice-oriented outcomes. Care ethics can inform more inclusive and equitable development practices, emphasizing participatory methods prioritizing marginalized communities' needs and perspectives.

The paper discusses relational accountability's importance in fostering trust and cooperation between development actors and communities. Care ethics can address entrenched inequities and build resilience against future disruptions. Embedding care into development practices can foster equitable futures and promote just and sustainable development outcomes. This research contributes to the discourse on ethics of care in development practices, emphasizing the need for a nuanced understanding of vulnerability and care.

Keywords: Vulnerability, Ethics of Care, Power Dynamics, Development Practices, Relational Accountability

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Through the 2024 film Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, this paper uses Oyewumi’s decolonial lens to show how African women’s knowledge systems reclaim agency, resist patriarchy, and model culturally grounded, transformative approaches to development.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the foundations of development by posing a critical question: What might development be if reimagined through the lived experiences and intellectual traditions of African women? Anchored in a close reading of the 2024 biographical film Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, directed by Bolanle Austen-Peters, the study foregrounds Indigenous African epistemologies as sites of agency, resistance, and futurity. The film's portrayal of Funmilayo's leadership within the Abeokuta Women's Union serves as a compelling narrative to examine how African women's knowledge systems, rooted in communal ethics, relational authority, and cultural continuity, mobilize collective action and political resistance against colonial and patriarchal paradigms. The analysis situated within Oyeronke Oyewumi's decolonial gender theory, challenges the imposition of Western gender binaries onto African social formations, and asserts that precolonial Yoruba society organized social relations through seniority and relationality. The paper argues that Funmilayo's activism exemplifies a distinct African feminist praxis. Her use of protest songs, women's assemblies, and moral suassion reflects a development model grounded not in individualism or extractive growth, but in communal well-being and culturally embedded ethics. By centering African feminist epistemology, this study positions Funmilayo's life and activism as both a historical archive and blueprint for alternative development futures. It contends that Indigenous African knowledge systems offer critical insights into agency, justice, and community-led transformation-insights that are urgently needed in an era marked by global epistemic dislocation. Consequently, the paper calls for reorientation of development discourse, that privileges African women's intellectual traditions as generative frameworks for equitable, sustainable, and culturally resonant futures.

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This paper examines the ethical tension between African feminist ethics of care and the moral logic of tech capitalism. Tech capitalism thrives on platform capitalism, data colonialism and neoliberal marketisation. The paper offers care as a central moral counterpart to contemporary tech capitalism.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the ethical tension between African feminist ethics of care and the moral logic of tech capitalism. This is because the political economy of the ongoing 4th industrial revolution, which typifies the advancement in the use of artificial intelligence, thrives on platform capitalism, data colonialism and neoliberal marketisation. These are, however, detrimental to the principles of African feminist philosophy, like àjùmòse/àjọṣe (collective responsibility, relationality, and reciprocity), as technological capitalism reproduces extractive, colonial and gendered forms of exploitation through invisibilisation and feminisation of care labour. To this end, this paper addresses the question of: how does African feminist ethics of care expose the limits of tech capitalism? Can digitalisation be ethical without centring care? This paper employs the philosophical methodology of critical thinking, argumentation, and the reconstruction of ideas to argue that African feminist ethics is fundamental to reorienting digital development toward dignity, moral responsibility, and collective well-being. This paper contributes to African feminist ethics, development ethics, and critical digital ethics by offering care as a central moral counterpart to contemporary tech capitalism.

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Amongst African/Isoko women, Wrappers (loincloth) embody their being, knowledge, lived experiences, and wealth. Thus impacting women's agency, care ethics, and epistemic justice. Analysing the epistems of African/Isoko Women wrappers is significant to developmental processes in African societies.

Paper long abstract

Amongst indigenous African/Isoko women, a wrapper embodies her experience; it represents her ethics/values. At different developmental stages, these women’s wrappers become a priceless possession, embodying their knowledge, lived experiences and secure future. Allman, J. (2004) explained it as ‘the power and politics of dress’, but not much has been researched on the meta-ethical values or the epistemes of African/Isoko women’s wrappers. This paper aims to explore women's agency, caring ethics, and epistemic justice, as encapsulated in their traditional practices. Its objective includes examining the epistemic ties in African/Isoko women's traditional practices, as well as the feminist development processes and ethics of women's inheritance rites. It interrogates how indigenous African women's philosophies can be harvested for economic development. The study employs ethnographic research, critical analysis, and philosophical clarification of clothing, particularly Isoko women’s, conveyed through their views of wrappers, thus emphasising the ethics of care ingrained in women's daily behaviours. The paper recommends and concludes on how an African/Isoko theory of epistemic justice can guide knowledge creation and influence Africa's developmental futures. It demonstrates how feminist care ethics can redefine developmental ethics, including broadening the definition of knowledge by drawing on African women's philosophical ideas and everyday material culture, such as the wrapper, a seemingly straightforward item that serves as instruments of care, agency, and social regulation, providing avenues for African societies to develop in a way that is progressive, restorative, and sustainable