Governing Supply Chains for Societal Impact: What Can We Learn From Indigenous African Philosophies?

Abstract

Africa's growing role in global supply chains presents an important opportunity for more socially grounded and context‐sensitive research in supply chain management (SCM). Despite its economic and demographic significance, African contexts remain underrepresented in mainstream SCM scholarship, which limits understanding of the continent's diversity, complexity, and social dimensions. This article examines governance in African supply chains through three persistent societal challenges: the erosion of local agency, labor exploitation, and marginalization. While dominant frameworks such as transaction cost economics, agency theory, and the relational view offer useful insights into coordination and control, they do not fully capture the relational, ethical, and social dimensions of supply chains in Africa. To address this gap, the article draws on Indigenous African philosophies: Ujamaa , Ubuntu , and Ọmọlúàbí as analytical lenses. The study contributes to the literature through perspectival theorizing, by reinterpreting established SCM phenomena through African philosophical perspectives, and through propositional theorizing, by advancing theoretically informed and contextually grounded propositions and research questions. The article demonstrates how African insights can inform and extend existing SCM theories by promoting more socially impactful and ethically informed governance, and by positioning the supply chain as a potential source of conceptual innovation for globally relevant and socially meaningful theory.