African metaphysics and disabilities

Abstract

In the last decade or so, some substantive work on disability in Africa has been done. Nonetheless, and this is so for different reasons, the nature and substance of disability in intellectual discourses in Africa still largely remain undefined and uncategorised. In this article, I aim to contribute to the scholarship on disability by examining if and whether one can talk meaningfully of metaphysical disability and how this notion of disability is related to other forms of disability or particular incidences of disability in an African cultural worldview. This discussion and exercise I believe not only sheds light on possible metaphysical underpinnings of disabilities in Africa, but also illuminates some aspects of the nature and substance of disability on the continent.