African voices in global health: Knowledge, creativity, accountability

ABSTRACT

In this article we offer an introduction to a special issue of Global Public Health on the theme of ‘African Voices in Global Health: Knowledge, Creativity, Accountability’. This special issue explores Africans’ self-understood roles – and voices – in global health (as both researchers and interlocutors in relation to various global health institutions/policies). We argue that the special issue’s focus on African voices in global health is critical in view of the legacies of colonial medicine and public health for contemporary narratives, discourses, and practices. It is important to acknowledge that Africans continue to address the structural injustices facing them in relation to global health policies and practices on the continent. In the face of this they have demanded that donors, NGOs, governments, and intergovernmental organisations be politically, fiscally, and ethically accountable to the people they serve on the continent. As the special issue highlights, critical scholars of global health based in Africa are increasingly offering challenges to the frequent positioning of African patients and study-participants as either invisible, or disempowered, in understanding and shaping their own lived experiences of health in a transnational context.

KEYWORDS:

• Africa and global health
• decolonising global health
• African researchers
• global health activism
• local approaches to global health

Acknowledgements

The views expressed are those of the authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work has been supported in part by the African Studies Institute, University of Minnesota (African Voices in Global Health Grant) and the South African National Research Foundation [grant number 120420].