At a United Nations event, Nigerian biomedical scientist Obianuju Ekeocha responded to a Western official’s claim that denying African women access to abortion was a form of colonization. Her reply went viral, not because it was loud, but because it was rooted. “There isn’t a way to express that concept in my language without it sounding like you’re describing something close to murder,” she said. Her words, bridging Western scientific training and Nigerian Igbo cultural heritage, exposed a fault line between global moral systems, a clash between imported ideologies of autonomy and deeply rooted African understandings of life, community, and sacred responsibility.
This isn’t just a language gap. It’s a moral gap. And it matters deeply when aid and ideology are packaged together. What many in the West call “reproductive rights,” many Africans experience as a rejection of their fundamental beliefs about life, family, and human purpose.
Language reveals worldview. When certain concepts cannot be translated into a culture’s mother tongue without moral distortion, it suggests that those ideas may not only be foreign but also incompatible. In many African languages, there’s no neutral or positive way to describe ending a pregnancy. That isn’t a failure of vocabulary. It’s a reflection of embedded beliefs about community responsibility, reverence for life, and intergenerational duty.
This is why linguistic and cultural preservation matters. When development agencies sideline indigenous languages in favor of globalized, technocratic English, they risk erasing entire ethical traditions. Christian anthropology, deeply woven into many African cultures, sees human beings as created in the image of God, embedded in relationships of obligation—not isolated individuals maximizing choice. This view is reflected in thinkers like John Paul II, who emphasized the intrinsic dignity of the human person and the social nature of freedom. These traditions are not simply cultural; they are also theological. They see the human person not as a self-contained individual but as a being made for relationship, with others and with God.
Linguistic and cultural preservation are more than merely symbolic. They are also functional. For instance, when reproductive health programs are designed without engagement from local moral authorities or traditional midwives, they often fail to gain community trust. One rural clinic in Uganda reported that attendance dropped when educational materials included language about “autonomy” and “termination,” concepts unfamiliar or disturbing to village elders and family networks.
Yet development programs often import more than aid. They bring with them a moral infrastructure built around autonomy and secular individualism. Words like empowerment and choice may sound benign in international reports, but on African ground they can feel like moral imposition, even moral violence, especially when tied to funding requirements. They give name to a practice in terms that obscure its consequences and undermine communal ethics.
This plays out most visibly in reproductive health policy. International organizations that insist on “bodily autonomy” often disregard the moral instincts of the communities they serve. Aid is offered with strings attached: Accept this moral framework or lose access to care and resources. It’s not aid; it’s leverage. And it undermines the very dignity it claims to defend.
That leverage creates impossible choices. African women who want better clinics, midwives, and education are told those services come with ideological conditions. In effect, they must disavow ancestral wisdom and spiritual inheritance to access material progress. This isn’t empowerment. It’s assimilation by coercion.
Even well-meaning health workers face pressure to present reproductive services through an individualist lens. Metrics for success focus on isolated behavior change, not community resilience or moral alignment. What’s lost is an understanding of flourishing that includes elders, families, faith, and legacy.
This is a new kind of colonialism—not of land, but of meaning. The concern echoes themes in Kwame Gyekye’s philosophy, in which he argues for “moderate communitarianism” as an ethical alternative to hyper-individualism. In the shadow of colonial histories, this dynamic feels all too familiar: the erasure of local voices in the name of progress. Colonialism comes not only with armies but also with administrative language, NGO funding, and professional standards rooted in secular liberalism. It asks people to trade their moral compass for access to resources. True post-colonial justice requires respecting not only political sovereignty but also moral sovereignty.
Meanwhile, African cultures continue to hold together what Western modernity often tears apart: spiritual and physical well-being, personal good and communal welfare, present circumstances and eternal questions. When these systems are dismissed as backward or patriarchal, what’s really being rejected is their deep coherence.
This isn’t to romanticize tradition or deny the real struggles African women face: poverty, violence, educational barriers. But the solution isn’t to bulldoze existing value systems. Real empowerment lifts from within. It builds on trusted foundations rather than replacing them with imported ideologies.
Too often, discussions about women’s rights treat tradition and religion as enemies. But across much of sub-Saharan Africa, women are tradition-bearers, spiritual anchors, and primary decision-makers in family life. It is elder women who serve as counselors in times of crisis, who pass down inherited wisdom, and who offer guidance on childbirth, parenting, and community dispute resolution. Their authority is informal but undeniable.
Marginalizing these women in favor of outside experts erodes social capital. In one region of Kenya, an NGO’s decision to bypass village matriarchs and to partner solely with young urban leaders led to a boycott of clinic services. It wasn’t opposition to healthcare; it was resistance to moral sidelining.
Respecting African women means understanding the cultural ecosystems they sustain. It means recognizing that “choice” may not be a solitary act of will but a communal discernment shaped by shared moral commitments. Reproductive health, in this light, becomes less about services delivered and more about relationships sustained.
Development should be collaborative, not combative. It requires asking what local women, families, and leaders actually believe the good life looks like, and listening, even when the answers aren’t framed in Western terms. Progress must grow from the cultural and spiritual soil it lands on or it won’t last.
This means redesigning how aid is delivered. Programs must be shaped by the voices of local religious leaders, mothers, and elders, not bypassed for Western-trained elites. Field workers need formation in local languages and philosophies, not just technical skills. And success must be measured in moral integrity and community health, not just policy compliance.
Imagine reproductive programs that support traditional birth attendants, strengthen networks of elder women, and elevate the role of local churches in supporting family life. These aren’t compromises but culturally sustainable solutions.
Freedom, rightly understood, is not about shedding one’s roots. It’s about making space for communities to draw from their own wells of wisdom to face modern challenges. It’s about refusing to let justice become just another export.
Far from being barriers, culture and religion are the deep structures through which African communities make sense of suffering, hope, and human dignity. And in a global development world obsessed with speed and scalability, anchors are exactly what we need. For African women and their children, families, and cultures, respect for these anchors may be the difference between temporary aid and lasting dignity.
This requires a broader philosophical shift. Development models that prioritize efficiency over empathy, universalism over particularity, and compliance over dialogue are doomed to fail where moral depth matters most. Africa is not a laboratory for ideological experiments. As argued in Chinua Achebe’s literary reflections, ignoring indigenous systems of meaning in favor of imported ideologies leads to spiritual dislocation. It is a continent with ancient traditions, living faiths, and hard-earned moral wisdom.
To genuinely support African women, development actors must approach with cultural humility. This means not only learning from African voices but deferring to them in matters of value and meaning. It means recognizing that the moral legitimacy of a policy cannot be measured by donor satisfaction but by how faithfully it reflects the community’s deepest convictions.
Ultimately, we must ask: What does it mean to be human in relationship with others and with the transcendent? African theologians like John Mbiti remind us that “I am because we are,” a worldview where dignity arises through belonging, not detachment. That question is not answered the same way everywhere, and pretending otherwise is both naive and dangerous. If global development ignores this, it risks becoming a well-funded engine for cultural erosion.
The West has much to offer Africa: technological innovation, medical expertise, and legal infrastructure. But it also has much to receive: a rediscovery of moral embeddedness, of family continuity, of the sacred woven into the everyday. If partnership is truly the goal, the exchange must go both ways.
To walk with African women is to listen before speaking, to serve before directing, and to build before correcting. The future of global development and of African women’s dignity depends on abandoning one-size-fits-all frameworks. True progress begins with pluralism rooted in mutual respect. It is to resist the temptation to remake others in one’s own image and instead honor the image of God as it appears through different lenses.
If we do this, development will not feel like domination. It will feel like dignity is fulfilled.
And that may be the most empowering outcome of all.
