What Can the Capabilities Approach Learn from an Ubuntu Ethic? A Relational Approach to Development Theory

•Considers how the capabilities’ approach can be reconciled with an ubuntu ethic.•Develops a new account of capabilities as inherently relational.•Show that this provides an intuitive and unified theoretical framework.•Examines implications for empirical work on poverty.•Shows how African intellectual traditions can enrich Anglo-American thought. Over the last two decades, the capabilities’ approach has become an increasingly influential theory of development. It conceptualizes human wellbeing in terms of an individual’s ability to achieve functionings we have reason to value. In contrast, the ethic of ubuntu views human flourishing as the propensity to pursue relations of fellowship with others, such that relationships have fundamental value. These two theoretical perspectives seem to be in tension with each other. While the capabilities’ approach seems to focus on individuals as the locus of ethical value, an ubuntu ethic concentrates on the relations between individuals as the locus. In this article, we ask, to what extent is the capabilities’ approach compatible with this African ethical theory? We argue that, on reflection, relations play a much stronger role in the capabilities’ approach than often assumed. There is good reason to believe that relationality is part of the concept of a capability itself, where such relationality has intrinsic ethical value. This understanding of the ethical centrality of relations grounds new normative perspectives on capabilities, and offers a more comprehensive grasp of the relevance of relationships to empirical enquiry. We hope this provides an indication of the rich conversations that are possible when African and Anglo-American intellectual traditions engage one another, and whets the appetite of thinkers working in western traditions to engage with their colleagues in Africa and the global South more generally.