Ethics and research frontiers: perspectives from seven African scholars

Existing literature has concentrated on ethics and research but there is less attention on ethics challenges and research frontiers from the perspective of African scholars. To explore ethics and research frontiers and specifically to explore ethics challenges and research frontiers in Africa, this paper adopted a scholarly personal narrative method. The application of content analysis deemed sufficient to avail emerged themes. The findings revealed that the scholars from different fields, comprising economics, health, management, medicine, statistics, and tourism, opined that there are ethical challenges in advancing research frontiers in Africa. Some of these challenges include “manipulation of data”, “culture of the community towards research”, “delay of clearance approvals”, “lack of one stop shop for clearance permits”, “transcribing questionnaires”, “consents”, “cultural sensitivity”, “no grants”, “highly competitive grant application”, and “poor collaboration” which prevent the advancing of research frontiers in the continent of Africa. A practical implication is for government bodies and agencies dealing with research issues to improve processes like minimizing delays on clearance approvals and sensitizing the community on the benefits of research and encourage collaboration. Future studies may apply mixed methods to examine the phenomenon of research frontiers in Africa.