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Working on the Encyclopedia Africanaunder the sponsorship of Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, W.E.B. Du Bois reversed his conviction that only the ‘talented tenth’ could profit from a university education. He proposed that virtually all humans have a right to a university education. He further insisted that Africana (African and African in the Diaspora) universities are ethically obligated and uniquely positioned to spearhead a movement to train students to become professionals who solve problems community members are unable to solve for themselves. Africana universities can, with the aid of appropriate technology and service learning, take the steps necessary to achieve Du Bois’s vision. In this paper, we present a practical account of how universities may work with local communities to determine the questions to research and then deploy appropriate technologies through community-based but student-driven service learning projects. Our hypothesis is that students can become community leaders of tomorrow by partnering with community members to solve theoretical issues and practical problems of their communities. As university graduates inspired by Du Bois’s vision for Africana universities, their mission will be to establish alumni communities of learning that transfer problem-solving skills to community members who do not yet have access to university education.

Ethical theory and technology practice raise two primary questions. First, what are the ethical principles driving sustainable appropriate technology? Second, what are the viable applications of those principles with respect to alternative appropriate technologies? The hypothesis of this study is that the earth is experiencing the current and sixth mass extinction. Our methodology is first to review ethical principles that address this problem and then to examine their consequences in the field of renewable energy technologies. A primary engine driving mass extinction is current modes of energy production. Unless energy is readily and cheaply available, humans will struggle to form a single economic community that can guarantee the universal rights embodied in the United Nations Declarations of Universal Human Rights. Unfortunately, Micro-Appropriate Technology (AT) applications cannot presently replace the current carbon-based global energy system. This paper analyzes the ethical potential of Macro Photo-Voltaic and Concentrating Solar Power AT systems. Our conclusion argues that the world's collective nations must undertake a global solar “Manhattan Project” to arrest the sixth mass extinction and overcome the misery of billions in the Global South through ethical sustainable development.

This essay demonstrates how African philosophy can be a key to African innovation and development. Its first section illustrates how philosophy as a discipline drives innovation in science and technology. The second part proposes a new discipline linking science, engineering and technology to sustainable, ethical development. The third section proposes an ethics core derived from ancient Egyptian and Ethiopian thought. It addresses the fact that non-African principles and personnel have in some measure directed African development, resulting in unsustainable and sometimes destructive outcomes. The conclusion argues that the primary instrument for African development must be a Pan-African curriculum developed through research funded by the African Union. The curriculum's dissemination will depend on widespread broadband internet access throughout Africa. The essay's method is philosophical, deploying conceptual analysis of key terms as well as generalized descriptions of the intersections of science, technology, innovation and development. The essay proposes prescriptions for developing relations among these fields for the theory and policy of African development. This study is empirical in the sense that philosophy offers broad generalizations about experience. However, it does not examine data-sets characteristic of more specifically targeted scientific descriptions.