Relational Ontology in a Digital World: Integrating African Personhood and Platformized Nursing.

Abstract

The discipline of nursing has entered a historical moment in which two profound forces converge: the global rise of digital platform labour and the resurgence of relational, communitarian ontologies rooted in African philosophy. Yet these forces are rarely theorised together, despite shaping the same discipline. This paper integrates African philosophical thoughts which conceptualise personhood as a dynamic, communal, and relational achievement, with ideas around platformized nursing, which explains how digital platforms restructure nursing labour, relationships, and professional identity through algorithmic governance and datafication. Through a digital-relational synthesis, the paper argues that platformization disrupts the communal and relational foundations of personhood and care, while simultaneously creating new socio-technical spaces in which relationality must be renegotiated. An integrated model, the Digital-Relational Nursing Framework is presented which offers a multilevel lens for understanding how nurses and patients become persons within increasingly digitalised health systems. This synthesis provides conceptual grounding for empirical research, ethical analysis, workforce policy, and curriculum reform aimed at safeguarding relational accountability and communal wellbeing in the digital era.