Geocultural Epistemologies of Women’s Empowerment: Reclaiming the Legacy of African Philosophy

This article critically examines the predominance of epistemologies from the Global North in defining and assessing women’s empowerment in African contexts. It argues that mainstream frameworks, particularly those focused on individualistic models and economic participation rates, often fail to capture Africa’s socio philosophical realities. Drawing on decolonial theory, geo-cultural epistemological approaches, and Afro-feminist scholarship, this article posits that engaging with indigenous African philosophies is crucial for developing a transformative and contextually relevant discourse on empowerment. Through systematic philosophical analysis, this research investigates how Ubuntu, the Akan Philosophy of Personhood, and Communalism reconceptualize agency, personhood, and power. The methodology combines conceptual analysis, critical literature review, and philosophical reconstruction to examine how these frameworks provide substantive alternatives to individualistic models prevalent in development policy. The findings demonstrate that these philosophies establish a robust ethical foundation for reimagining women’s empowerment through relational agency, ontological recognition of women’s value, and community-oriented advancement. The discussion is further enriched by a decolonial feminist perspective on gender equality programming, which underscores the practical failures of interventions uninformed by local epistemologies. This research contributes to epistemic decolonization in practice by offering a coherent, culturally grounded framework that challenges the individualism relationality binary in feminist theory and bridges philosophical discourse with development praxis. The study proposes relational empowerment indicators and recommends empirical case study research to validate and refine this model in diverse African contexts.