Jackson Juma Coy

Jackson Juma Coy is an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. His research focuses on bioethics, moral philosophy, and African thought, with a particular interest in end-of-life care and the integration of African cultural values into global biomedical ethics. He is the founder of the Tanzania Bioethics Organization (TBO), which promotes African perspectives in ethical scholarship and public engagement.

My academic and professional interests lie in the field of biomedical ethics, particularly in shaping an approach that reflects African philosophical, cultural, and religious perspectives. While biomedical ethics has largely been articulated within Western traditions, I believe that Africa possesses distinctive insights that can enrich global ethical discourse. My scholarly commitment is to demonstrate how African values, traditions, and worldviews can meaningfully contribute to the interpretation and application of biomedical principles.

My doctoral research in Philosophy focused on one particular dimension of biomedical ethics: terminal discharge, which refers to the practice of discharging terminally ill patients from hospitals to home-based end-of-life care. This subject has revealed to me the pressing need to interrogate how Western biomedical models are received in African contexts. The transition of care from hospital to home raises questions that cannot be fully addressed by existing Western ethical frameworks. In many African societies, religious beliefs, communal values, and cultural practices shape conceptions of autonomy, beneficence, and end-of-life dignity. However, these perspectives are often neglected within formal medical institutions and training. My interest seeks to foreground these dimensions, demonstrating that a richer and more contextually grounded bioethics must take into account African lived realities.

In pursuit of this vision, among other initiatives I established the Tanzania Bioethics Organization (TBO), a registered body with the Tanzanian government. TBO’s mission is twofold: to advance scholarly research on bioethics from an African perspective, and to engage in public awareness campaigns that demystify bioethics for ordinary citizens. This initiative rests on the conviction that bioethics is not merely a technical concern for healthcare professionals, but a matter of broad social importance that touches families, communities, and patients themselves. TBO is preparing to welcome scholars from the Kansas African Studies Center (KASC), with whom I hope to establish formal collaboration.

My relationship with the Kansas African Studies Center (KASC) began after presenting my PhD proposal at the MAAAS Conference in Kansas (2022). This engagement underscored the need to bring Africa’s ethical and intellectual contributions to medicine and health into ongoing interdisciplinary discussions within African Studies. I am especially eager to collaborate with KASC to help bridge this gap, contributing perspectives from African medical ethics to complement the center’s work on culture, decolonization, and social justice. I hope that my research in African medical ethics, especially on end-of-life decision-making, will offer fresh perspectives to ongoing scholarly conversations within KASC and similar institutions.

Additionally I look forward to fostering deeper institutional ties between KASC and my home institution, the University of Dar es Salaam, where a new African Studies program is being developed. Through such partnerships, I hope to support both individual scholarship and institutional exchange, enriching the global conversation on bioethics and African thought.

Many social movements in Tanzania aim to support the struggle to liberate women from human rights impediments and violations. These include a wide range of local organizations established to defend and advance the rights of Tanzanian women. While these movements are ideally positioned to protect women’s rights as articulated in numerous national and international women’s charters and to promote their intellectual and economic flourishing, this paper examines the extent to which they have invested in empowering women as individuals rather than as abstract beneficiaries of advocacy.

I argue that many efforts to emancipate Tanzanian women have remained superficial, often confined to academic discourse or institutional rhetoric rather than translating into concrete, lived changes. Despite the numerous obstacles that activists and organizations attempt to address, one fundamental aspect of women’s liberation has been consistently overlooked: the psychological emancipation of Tanzanian women at the most personal level. This involves cultivating the courage to question inherited beliefs, reject limiting social norms, and search for self-defined truths.

To illuminate this gap, I draw on the concept of adaptive preference as articulated by Sen, Nussbaum, and Khader. This framework helps explain how systemic inequality can shape women’s internal preferences in ways that inadvertently sustain their own oppression. By applying this lens, I explore how some Tanzanian women may unknowingly participate in their marginalization due to internalized norms and expectations shaped by longstanding sociocultural realities.

Finally, I argue that recognizing and critically examining the negative impact of adaptive preference is crucial for advancing the movement toward Tanzanian women’s full emancipation. Understanding how internalized constraints operate can open new pathways for more meaningful and transformative empowerment efforts