Cultural and ethical dimensions of anthropomorphizing technology in Africa

Abstract

Abstract This article examines how anthropomorphism, the attribution of human characteristics to non-human systems, acquires distinctive cultural, ethical, and technological significance in African societies, and develops a relational framework for understanding human–machine interaction that challenges prevailing Western narratives. The study adopts a critical interpretivist, narrative–synthesis approach, drawing on African philosophy, science and technology studies, artificial intelligence (AI) ethics, cultural anthropology, and posthumanism to construct an interpretive account of how technologies are domesticated, reinterpreted, and morally evaluated within African cosmologies. African anthropomorphism is rooted in traditions such as animism, totemism, oral storytelling, and communal ethics, and embodies a relational ontology in which personhood and agency are shared among human and non-human actors. Robots, AI systems, and Information and Communication Technologies are variously interpreted as moral subjects, children-in-training, or spiritually charged instruments, with notable regional variation across West, East, and Southern Africa. The article synthesizes a fragmented body of African scholarship on technology, animism, and relational ethics into a single, sustained framework for anthropomorphism, treating African cosmologies as a primary analytical lens rather than a comparative aside to Euro-American theory. The article contributes to a pluralistic understanding of technology ethics and offers a framework relevant to the design, governance, and study of AI and robotics in culturally diverse settings. This is done by foregrounding African relational epistemologies in debates on human–machine interaction.