An overview of African philosophy and implications for nursing and midwifery practice: an African hermeneutic...

While nursing and midwifery have long drawn from Western and Eastern philosophies, the transformative potential of African philosophy remains only a recent phenomenon, perpetuating a gap in culturally grounded care paradigms. This scholarship addresses this lacuna by interrogating the nature of African philosophy and its implications for nursing and midwifery practice using an African hermeneutic approach. Six distinct approaches to defining African philosophy emerged. Across these schools, two unifying themes redefine core disciplinary concepts: communitarian personhood, which positions identity as a relational, moral achievement rather than an individual birthright; and holism, which interweaves physical, spiritual, social, and environmental well-being into an indivisible whole.