Learning from African Approaches to Ethics

When we Africans want to give high praise to someone, we say, Yu, u nobuntu Hey, so-and-so has ubuntu . A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons... Ubuntu does not say, I think, therefore I am. It says rather I am human because I belong. 

Africa has a gift to give the world that the world needs desperately, this reminder that we are more than the sum of our parts the reminder that strict individualism is debilitating. The world is going to have to learn the fundamental lesson that we are made for harmony, for interdependence. If we are ever truly to prosper, it will be together [30]. 

This concept of ubuntu provides an excellent description of the ethical motivation that should underlie the ethical practice of engineering. It can apply wherever engineers carry out their work. 

The concept of ubuntu demonstrates an attitude to others that is fundamentally relational. Cornel du Toit has argued that such a view of life with others, and with nature, contrasts with much Western thinking about nature, and others, which is fundamentally instrumental and focused on efficiency. For this reason he suggests that Africa may be able to give the world a lead in developing technology in a way that ensures the maintenance of the integrity of persons and communities  

International Energy Agency, Energy for All Financing Access for the Poor. Special Early Excerpt of the World Energy Outlook 2011 (lEA, Paris, 2011) 

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