Global Health Equity through Decolonizing Health Research Ethics in Africa: Leveraging Kwame Nkrumah’s Analysis of Neocolonialism

Background: Arguably, the ultimate ethical goal of conducting health research among humans is to provide them with better health opportunities. Because of growing perceptions that ongoing international collaborative health research between the Global North and Africa is neocolonial in nature, there is worry that this goal will not be easily met. Hence, there is a need to decolonize international collaborative health research in Africa. The current strategy of decolonizing international collaborative health research in Africa is the decolonization of health research ethics. Using Kwame Nkrumah’s analysis of neocolonialism in ‘Neocolonialism: the last stage of imperialism’, the aim of this paper is to examine the potential of the current strategy to meet the ultimate goal of decolonization. Methods: The analysis in this paper is based on Kwame Nkrumah’s perspective on neocolonialism and decolonization. Using the speculative and prescriptive approaches, the paper uses secondary sources to corroborate and demonstrate its argument. Results: The paper proposes the concept of maximin exploitation as a holistic conception of exploitation in health research to guide the discourse of decolonizing international collaborative health research. After revealing a growing consensus that international collaborative health research is neocolonial in nature and hence a need to decolonise it, the paper demonstrates that Nkrumah’s analysis of neocolonialism implies that the ultimate goal of decolonizing health research in Africa should be to mitigate and ultimately stop the exploitation of African peoples. Discussion: The paper shows that the current decolonizing strategy, is yet to demonstrate its ability to mitigation maximin exploitation in health research. Unless conscientiously pursued, the efforts based on this strategy risk failure to meet Nkrumah’s ultimate goal of decolonization, and arguably are becoming a subtle method for facilitating, and entrenching neocolonialism—the exploitation of African peoples. Conclusion: The mission of decolonizing health research ethics in Africa needs to clearly demonstrate the potential to mitigate and ultimately end maximin exploitation in health research, and be critical enough to avoid the risk of subconsciously facilitating neocolonialism.