Vulnerability, Context and Ethical Practice: The African Journal of Bioethics at Volume 3

Volume 3, Issue 1 of the African Journal of Bioethics arrives at a moment worth pausing on. Over the past three volumes, this journal has been doing the internal work that turns a publication into a platform: strengthening peer review processes, building editorial capacity, training the team, developing an active and engaged editorial board, and growing a community of authors and reviewers, whose expertise spans the continent. These are the foundations that make everything else possible – including, this year, a publishing partnership with Pluto Journals and hosting on ScienceOpen that extends the reach of this work to a wider global audience. From its founding, this journal has operated on a clear conviction: that bioethics on this continent is being done, rigorously, contextually, and consequentially, and that it deserves a publishing home built around that reality. African perspectives are not supplements to global bioethics discourse. They are constitutive of it. The AJB exists to make that case through the quality of what it publishes, not through assertion. None of what appears in this issue arrived without effort. Our peer reviewers gave time and expertise that remains largely uncompensated. Our authors trusted this platform with work that matters to them. The editorial team has invested in this journal as a long-term project, not a transaction. That investment is what these pages represent.