The Efficiency-Relationality Paradox: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Ubuntu Disability Theology in the African Church

Across sub-Saharan Africa, Deaf congregants often remain excluded from worship, leadership, and theological formation because church practices privilege spoken communication and underinvest in sign-language access. This article develops a hearing-mediated, contextual artificial intelligence (AI) theology of disability for the African church through qualitative document analysis of the published literature on disability, Ubuntu, African ecclesiology, and emerging AI accessibility tools. This article does not report primary empirical data, but offers a conceptual synthesis requiring Deaf-led validation. Using the Contextual Disability Paradigm and Ubuntu philosophy as interpretive lenses, the article argues that AI can expand access through offline-first translation and captioning tools, but it can also weaken embodied, cross-ability relationship if technology becomes a substitute for relational labour, sign-language learning, and Deaf leadership. The article’s central contribution is the concept of the efficiency-relationality paradox: the more efficiently AI removes communicative barriers, the less incentive may remain for embodied mutuality. Because the analysis is based entirely on secondary sources and includes no Deaf-produced materials, the findings are provisional and structurally limited. The article concludes that any credible AI theology of disability in Africa must be offline-first, data-just, denominationally adaptable, and directed toward Deaf-led co-research and co-theology.