Ubuntu Ethics as a Paradigm for Human Development in Africa

Human development, grounded on the capability approach, focuses on the enhancement of people’s real freedom to choose the kinds of lives they have reason to value. Amartya Sen’s capability approach conceptualizes human wellbeing in terms of an individual’s ability to achieve physical or mental states that allow individuals to participate in life. That approach, however, has been criticized for its individualism and its lack of attention to the inherent worth of relationships and communities. This chapter agrees with Nimi Hoffmann and Thaddeus Metz’ critique of the capability approach, which draws on Ubuntu ethics. Hoffmann and Metz argue that human development consists of having the propensity to pursue communal relations with other individuals or relations of fellowship. Such that relationships, or people’s capacity for having them, they claim have fundamental value. They also hold that development is meant to enhance people’s relations as ends in themselves, not merely as means. Based on their argument, this chapter argues that self-help groups would be both useful and good for their own sake, as forms of enhancing human development in Africa, since individuals undertake collective actions in order to improve their own lives. For any collective actions to be effective, it is necessary that members should have a sense of shared identity and solidarity which are core values of Ubuntu.