Ukama Ethic in Knowledge Production: Theorising Collaborative Research and Partnership Practices in the African University

Abstract

In this theoretical paper, we consider how relationships in the enterprise of collaborative educational research in higher education exhibit themselves. We conceptualise collaborative scientific researchers in the university as a community propelled by co-dependence and a strong sense of co-operation, common purpose and work towards mutual gain. Lacking the space to systematically defend collaboration as a fundamental value, we isolate and engage the relational ethic of ukama to explain the interpersonal and intercommunity relationship between researchers as individuals; between the protege and the seasoned academic scholars; and between researchers as a group and larger research funders in the African university. Our question is: To what extent is educational research engendering a culture of closeness and affection, speaking to the context of symbiosis with others in a boundless web, taking it from the traditional communocratic African worldview? We debate the complexities embedding the practices of collaborative research in relation to the way partnerships are established, power is distributed and control is exerted. We defend the position that the virtues of harmony, equality, solidarity, co-operation, mutual profit and reciprocity, as enshrined in the ukama ethic, are the most violated elements of the ethics of collaborative research in knowledge production in the African university.