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Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics 2018; 10 (1): 21-25 

 

 

21 

 

Organ Donation in an African Culture 
 

Ayinde Jamiu Kunle  

Department of Philosophy, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye, Ogun State,  

ayindejamiu90@gmail.com 

 

 

Abstract: This paper is an attempt to examine the traditional Yoruba beliefs about organs 

donation. Organ donation and transplantation remain a rare occurrence in Africa, this to a large 

extent can be as a result of the traditional African orientation on one hand and the advancement 

in medical research that came with transplanting organs on the other. This paper x-rays the 

problem of organ shortages in most African countries. It noted that apart from lack of awareness 

on organ donation, Africans traditionally would not be willing to donate their organs after death. 

This paper critically examines beliefs in some African cultures and their relationship with organ 

donation. We analyze life after death in the Yoruba tradition and the belief in the continuation of 

the body after death. The paper concludes that African belief in the continuation(reincarnation) 

of the body in the afterlife contributes to their non-willingness to donate an organ after death. 

 

Key words: Organ donation, African culture, Yoruba culture 

 

Introduction: Organ transplantation is one 

of the recent medical solutions to organ 

failures. Before 1950, the failure of an organ 

is almost equivalent to a death sentence. 

Today, research in the medical field brought 

about organ transplantation to solve the 

problem of organ failures. Rainer Gruessner 

(2016) defines organ donation as “the act of 

giving one or more organs (or part thereof), 

without compensation, for transplantation 

into someone else”. However, the 

availability of organs for transplantation 

remains challenging since the discovery of 

organ transplants. Babara (2004) said:  

Ever since the first transplants were 

carried out in the 1950s, there has been an 

imbalance between the availability of 

donated organs and the number of 

recipients. 

 

Razek et al buttress this point when they 

said:  

Greater knowledge and technical 

advances in the field of transplantation have 

increased the demand for organ 

donationbeyond the current capacity to 

supply them. For example, the transplant 

waiting list in the United States in 1999 was 

65 793 patients growing at an average rate 

of 16% per year as against the cadaveric 

increase of 5.6% in 1998 (Razek, Olthoff & 

Reilly, 2000). 

 

A Major ethical issue in organ 

transplantation today arises in the process of 

generating organs for transplantation. There 

are four major processes of generating 

organs for transplant. The first is living-

organ donation. This is a process where an is 

organ generated from donors who are still 

alive. It can be family, relatives, friends or 

strangers. Livingdonors are classified as the 

givers of life. They are not selfish with their 

body organs. They will that someone else 

who is dying can benefit from the unused or 

unimportant organ in their body. Such living 

donor donates an organ that does not cease 

life. An example of an organ donated by a 

living donor is the kidney, where one of the 

two kidneys possessed is donated to 



Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics 2018; 10 (1): 21-25 

 

 

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someone who has kidney failure. Dunstan 

(1997) has this to say:  

With transplantation from living 

donors the notion of 'donation', 'gift', 

becomes a reality: a willed, conscious gift. It 

extends from the giving of expendable or 

renewable resources like blood, bone 

marrow, and neural stem cells, to paired 

organs, kidneys, and segments of single 

organs, liver, spleen, and lung. It can save 

lives and improve the quality of lives, and so 

it can exert its emotional appeal directly on 

the potential donor 

 

 Some ethical issues arise from living 

donors. One of such is the sales of organs. It 

is the opinion in some quarters that the gift 

of an organ is a “gift that kills”.  

 

Another way of generating organs for 

transplantation is called xenotransplantation. 

This is the process of generating organs 

from animals. This process raises some 

ethical issues. Animal rights ethics frown at 

using the animal organ to cure human 

beings. However, the research in this aspect 

has not been perfected.  

 

Advance research in medical ethics has also 

brought about technological solutions to 

generating organs. There are several 

approaches to generating organs without 

considering natural existing organs. 

Regenerative medicine remains a prominent 

advanced medical research where organs are 

generated technologically from the stem cell 

of the patient in need of the organ. This 

process is yet to be perfected and there are 

only a few successes recorded in using 

advanced medical research in solving the 

problem of organ donation.  

 

Organs generated from cadaveric donors 

provided a major solution to the problem of 

organs shortage. Cadaveric organ donors can 

donate a more useful organ to cure the 

patient on the waiting list. The major 

challenge of generating organs through 

cadavers is the consent of both the cadaver 

and the family of the cadaver. The 

discussion on consent leads to the issue of 

autonomy. It has been argued that every 

individual has autonomy over his body, if 

such a body should be used after the death 

of the person, such person’s consent should 

be sorted.  

 

Generating organs from cadaveric donors 

requires educating the masses and 

government providing policy on how 

consent will be given by the citizen on organ 

donation. Government policy on organ 

donation consent can fall into one of these 

three categories. Presume consent, which is 

the assumption that the citizens will approve 

their organ to be donated for a patient in 

need of such organs. The policy only allows 

people who are not willing to opt-out by 

either signing a document or notifying a 

center of not agreeing with such 

presumption. The policy assumes that 

everyone would be willing to donate an 

organ. Presumed consent is defined 

according to the Medical dictionary as the 

assumption that a particular action would 

have been approved by a person or party if 

permission has been sought. Daniel also has 

this to say about presume consent.  

Presumed consent is also referred to 

as the “opt-out” system because individuals 

would have the option of opting out of the 

system and not donating their organs. 

(Daniel: 7) 

 

The second policy option is called presumed 

refusal where the government assumes that 

people are not willing to donate an organ. 

The policy gives room for those who wish 

their organ to be donated after death to sign 

a document or put down their wiliness in a 

program record.  



Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics 2018; 10 (1): 21-25 

 

 

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The third of the organ donation consent 

policy is a mandated choice which mandates 

every living person to take a position 

without any assumption.  

 

No doubt organ failure is a phenomenon that 

occurs in all countries either third world 

countries or first world. Today, organ failure 

treatment in Africa is giving low attention. 

Even though crowd funding is the launch, a 

very few African are willing to donate their 

organs after death. Most African country till 

date don’t have organ bank nor do they have 

a waiting list of patients in need of organ 

transplant. Some traditional African beliefs 

do not give room to exercise a gift of life.  

 

 

Africans and Organs Donation: The 

tripartite belief in the nature of human being 

as constituting the body, soul and mind also 

exists in Africa. However, the belief that 

when death occurs, the body becomes 

useless and separated from the soul seems 

not to be in consonance with African belief 

about the body after death.  

 

Most Africans believe that there is life after 

death, however such life which they usually 

refer to as the ancestral world requires them 

to have a good body and soul. Africans 

believe that when someone dies in a 

mysterious way, or not buried properly with 

all his or her body intact, such a person 

would not be accepted by ancestors or as 

ancestor in the life after death.  

 

On this, Thembelihle Ggogqoni, an elderly 

community member and also 

a traditional healer averse that,  

it is against black culture to remove 

the organs of a deceased person as it is 

believed their spirit continues to roam and 

will not be accepted by ancestors. 

 

The completeness of the body and proper 

burial has a relationship with the 

acceptability of the spirit of such a person in 

the life after. The way Africans respect their 

body and spirit while alive is the same way 

the body and spirit are respected after death. 

The body needs to be accorded adequate 

respect and put in good condition so that the 

spirit of the deceased will be accepted by the 

ancestors. Thembelihle further posits:  

As a traditional healer, I have a 

strong belief in the existence of ancestors 

and I directly communicate with them. If I 

die and have missing organs I will not be 

accepted by my ancestors. The body of the 

deceased has to be treated with respect 

 

The belief that body and soul need to be 

intact for the soul to be accepted by the 

ancestors affects the traditional African 

community’s orientation on organ donation. 

Organ donation will remain alien to 

traditional Africa belief as it cannot exist 

alongside the belief of body usefulness in 

life after death. On this ZizoZikali said:  

While thousands of South Africans 

are currently waiting for a life-saving organ 

transplant, it remains a difficult task to 

convince rural black communities to donate 

organs because of their cultural beliefs. 

 

The attitude of Africans towards organ 

donation will remain low as long as the 

cultural belief is considered. Traditionally, 

Africans will not be willing to donate an 

organ. When we consider the responses, we 

get from rural communities in African as 

regard organ donation, we will realize that 

cultural belief has grossly affected the 

willingness to donate an organ by traditional 

African. Mr Ngurewa Mwachofi, an expert 

in social behavior and communication, says 

religious and cultural beliefs are to blame 

for the negative attitude towards organ 

donation. 

 



Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics 2018; 10 (1): 21-25 

 

 

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It is this belief that prevents Africans from 

donating their corneas to patients in need. 

Mr. Ngurewa further said base on his 

experience in Africa that:  

We'd like them to pledge their 

corneas but because of their religious 

beliefs, they say they have to see heaven. 

Still, we've tried to talk to them to donate 

their corneas so they can help someone see 

this world. 

 

The major argument for organ donation is 

convincing the donor the fact that what he or 

she intends to donate is not useful to him or 

her but to the patient that is in dire need of 

it. In the area of a cadaveric donor, the 

argument remains that the dead is no longer 

in need of the body vis a vis the kidney, 

bone marrow, liver among others.  

 

Etheredge et al rightly identified the reason 

for the decrease in the willingness of 

Africans to donate an organ in their research 

on organ donation when they say:  

A decrease in willingness to donate 

heart, liver, and corneas was expressed by 

the black African population. This is 

consistent with cultural beliefs that 

emphasize the role of the ancestors after 

death, and the notion that the body should 

remain intact for spiritual reasons. 

 

However, the traditional Africa belief that 

such body is very much needed by the 

donor, it is a necessary condition for the 

donor to be accepted to the ancestral world.  

 

In the other examples that were given, the 

traditionally society believes that if cornea 

was donated to a patient the donor will not 

see heaven. This shows that it is only when 

traditional beliefs about body uselessness 

after death are resolved, that is when we will 

have more traditional Africans ready to 

donate organs to the patients in need of it.  

 

Yoruba and After World: Yoruba culture 

as one of the traditional Africa culture is not 

exempted from the belief in the usefulness 

of the body in the ancestral world. The 

Yoruba believe that the body needs to be 

intact for the ancestors to accept such a 

person into their world.  

 

The belief in the fusion of the body and the 

soul in the Yoruba belief system can be seen 

in their understanding of Abiku. The Yoruba 

believe that Abiku can be prevented from 

coming back by defacing the body of the 

dead child. This belief also leads them to the 

belief that if such a child is to be given birth 

to again, the mark of the defaced part will 

appear in the child’s body. This is explained 

by Umpire Abey when he posits about the 

Yoruba on Abiku that:  

Owing to the ephemeral nature of 

Abiku's life, Abiku completes several 

consecutive life-cycles with one mother. In 

some reality cases, the Yorubas, in one of 

their traditional ways of deterring Abiku 

from death after reborn deface such children 

either by cutting their finger, ear or a deep 

mark in the face or back. To a great surprise 

in most cases, the Abiku on reborn would 

have those marks whether on the face or 

back. 

 

This shows that the body and the soul have 

some fundamental relationship and that 

relationship does not end at death. 

  

The Yoruba just like other traditional Africa 

belief does not accommodate organ 

donation. Although Africans are 

communitarian in nature, they don’t believe 

that the body is part of their property that 

they can give away. The body is a necessary 

condition for living while alive as well as a 

necessary condition for acceptability in the 

ancestral world.  

 



Bangladesh Journal of Bioethics 2018; 10 (1): 21-25 

 

 

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Conclusion: This paper concludes that 

owing to the African belief system of life 

after death, organ donation cannot be 

successful in the traditional Africa 

community. This paper raises a new 

dimension to the discussion on community 

acceptance of organ donation. Traditional 

Africa will rather prefer   adequate efforts to 

perfect the advance medical research in 

donating organs through regenerative 

medicine rather than calling on the people to 

donate an organ for the patient on the 

waiting list.  

 

The apathy to organ donation experience in 

African is not only a result of lack of 

awareness or education, but the traditional 

African belief also contributes to the dearth 

of organs availability.  

 

 

Reference: 

Barbara K Pierscionek. What is presumed when we 

presume consent? BMC Medical Ethics, 2008; 9:8 

Anonymous. The Yoruba Concept of Abiku and 

Emere In Yorubaland. 

http://www.ekimogundescendant.org/the-yoruba-

concept-of-abiku-and-emere-in-yorubaland/ (Access 

on July 2018) 

Anne Soy. Why is organ donation taboo for many 

Africans? BBC Africa, Nairobi 2015. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-31350463 

(Access on 10 February 2018) 

Zizo Zikali. Cultural beliefs discourage organ donors. 

Health news 3rd January 2018. https://www.health-

e.org.za/2018/01/03/cultural-beliefs-discourage-

organ-donors/ (Access on 10 February 2018) 

Daniel, S. “Organ Donation: Autonomy, Presumed 

Consent, and Mandated Choice”. Oakland University 

2016. http://www.oakland.edu/upload/docs/Philosoph

y/Springer_Essay.pdf (Access on 10 February 2018). 

Dunstan G. R., The Ethics of Organ Donation in 

British Medical Bulletin 1997: 53:4: 

 

Etheredge H. R, R. E. Turner and D. Khan, Attitudes 

to Organ Donation among some urban South African 

Populations remain unchanged: A cross-sectional 

study (1993 – 2013) in SAMJ 2014; 104,: 2. 

 

Rainer, G. (2016). “Organ Donation”, Available at 

<http://www.britannica.com/topic/organ-donation> 

(Accessed on 30th of January, 2018) 

 

Razek, T, Olthoff, K & Reilly P. Issues in Potential 

Organ Donor Management. Surgical Clinics of North 

America 2000; 80:(3):1021 - 1030. 

 

 

Author declaration: The Author conceived the idea, 

did the literature review and wrote the manuscript. 

He also checked the manuscript meticulously.  

Conflict of interest: No Conflict of Interest.  


