Abstract
<title>Abstract</title> <p>Governance frameworks for neurotechnology are emerging first in high-capacity jurisdictions whose regulatory instruments are built on an individualist conception of personhood. This article argues that African relational philosophies — Harambee, Botho, and Zambian Humanism — supply a normatively distinct and institutionally workable foundation for governing neural data and brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) in African states, addressing collective and relational harms that individual-consent-based models are not designed to reach. Rather than treating Western regulatory instruments as templates for direct transplantation, the article develops a method of contextualised transferability that separates specific technical mechanisms — tiered risk classification, third-party conformity assessment, and regulatory sandboxes — from the normative assumptions in which they originated, drawing comparatively on the European Union's Artificial Intelligence Act, Singapore's Model Artificial Intelligence Governance Framework, and Australia's sectoral model. These mechanisms are re-embedded within a three-stage African Relational Governance Framework (ARGF), anchored respectively in Harambee, Botho, and Zambian Humanism, with each stage linked to a specific protected value, institutional mechanism, and accountability metric. The framework is connected explicitly to existing continental instruments — the African Union Data Policy Framework and the Malabo Convention — so that it builds on, rather than duplicates, Africa's own regional governance architecture. The article concludes that relational neurogovernance is best understood not as a rejection of technical regulatory learning from elsewhere, but as a normative recalibration of it.</p>