Studying futures and future-making

Conceptualizing the future in terms of human agency places the topic within the focus of the social sciences. As Marc Augé (2014: 1) points out: ‘The future, even when it concerns the individual, always has a social dimension: It depends on others’. This is an interesting argument, because it distinguishes between individual and societal futures, which have different durations and potentially also different objectives. Individual futures are usually confined to a lifetime, serving the specific needs and interests of an individual. Societal futures extend beyond one’s own life, reaching out at least into the next generation, and into collectively held imaginations and visions. Societal futures are therefore much broader, they are open for contestation, and they are typically the object of future studies.

In his book ‘The Future as Cultural Fact’, Arjun Appadurai (2013) presents some thoughts about ‘how humans construct their futures’ (ibid.: 286). He identifies three ‘notable human preoccupations that shape the future as a cultural fact’ (ibid.: 286), or cultural practices of future-making, namely anticipation, imagination, and aspiration (ibid.: 285ff.). These three practices make the future actionable, although in very diverse directions. In that sense, Appadurai distinguishes between two types of futures: a future of probabilities and a future of possibilities. Conceiving of the future in terms of probabilities relates it to calculated risks and opportunities, to forecasts and modelling, which is done through practices of anticipation. A future of possibilities, in contrast, is open to dreams, hopes, or grand visions, and it is therefore approached through the practices of imagination and aspiration. In Appadurai’s view, the future of probabilities stands for a rather narrow and deterministic understanding, whereas the future of possibilities indicates the manoeuvring space in which societies may operate.

The IPCC reports are examples of futures of probabilities (Niang et al. 2014, Trisos et al. 2022). They predict the extent and consequences of climate change based on past climate-observation data and model-based forecasting. Another example is the application of weather forecasts and scientific knowledge in smart-agriculture approaches. Software engineers and adherents of smart agriculture promote increases in agricultural productivity by transferring new digital technologies and agricultural extension to farmers in order to lay the basis for future productivity gains and well-being (Matejeck et al. this volume). In a similar vein, proponents of development corridors’ contribution to national economic growth anticipate high returns on investments into rural infrastructure (Revilla Diez et al. this volume). The second of these practices refers to the visions, shared ideas, and plans that drive a society. The practices of imagination are deeply embedded in social networks and the building of ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 1983), i.e. groups of people who share some common beliefs, for example in a common future. Such practices are inextricably linked to local cultural imaginaries as well as to global flows of ideas, designs, and ideologies. The vision of Africa as a conservation continent discussed by Vehrs and Bollig (this volume) and of a rapid transition towards a ‘green economy’ as detailed by Kioko et al. (this volume) resemble positive imaginaries rather than actual projections. Finally, there is aspiration, which comprises the hopes and dreams of people. The future may therefore be conceived of in many ways. While anticipation aims at a future that is narrowed down to probabilities, the other two practices – imagination and aspiration – conceive of the future more openly in terms of possibilities, visions, and desirable conditions. Schulz and Kovac (this volume) depict the faith-based aspirations of born-again Christians confronted with rapid economic and ecological change but endowed with a powerful ideology of personal improvement. Guma (this volume) analyses the aspirations of people handling digital phone-to-phone monetary transfers. Guma argues that the opportunities such digital transfers bring about impact kinship solidarity and intra-family transactions profoundly.

African futures are constantly evolving, which makes the topic of this book particularly relevant and scientifically challenging. Like everywhere else in the world, futures are always emerging, being reinvented and rejected, designed and destroyed. Of course, such future-making on the African continent and by African actors does not happen in an isolated space but is informed by global imaginaries, concepts, and models. African futures are the objects of dreams and fears, scientific forecasts and vernacular imagination, public debates and personal ambitions. What makes African futures so relevant and timely for scientific research is the fact that the way forward is extremely uncertain, contested, and conflict-ridden. In Africa, as in the rest of the world, people do not agree about desirable goals, but what makes the focus on African future-making so relevant is the gap between winners and losers, which seems to be bigger than in other parts of the world. The fact that the struggle for desirable futures is embedded in a problematic history of foreign domination and exploitation permeates future-making on the continent in all fields. But how can African futures and future-making be decolonialized? This is an essential question that Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Ajei follow up in two introductory chapters.

African futures emerge out of present conditions, but they are at the same time deeply embedded in historical developments. Emerging futures are therefore not completely coincidental, because they build upon what has been there before. They are influenced by the past, without being predetermined. At the same time, futures are open to surprise, to unexpected events and unprecedented conditions. African futures unfold along pathways, building upon societal and spatial structures. These pathways are prepared by huge infrastructure projects, large-scale land-use change, and particular power coalitions. Infrastructuring is a global phenomenon, which in many cases has a particularly deep and rapid impact in rural Africa, where hyper-modern infrastructure meets with challenged livelihoods, immensely dynamic social systems, and complex forms of governance.

Debates about African Futures may become very concrete when they are translated into policy papers and development projects (see Matejcek et al., Kioko et al., Vehrs and Bollig all this volume). They are envisioned in national plans like Kenya’s Vision 2030 or Tanzania’s Vision 2025 and are subsequently supported by internal and external funding sources. Some of these plans are currently being revised to prepare for the coming decades and emerging challenges. The African Union agreed upon a continental ‘Agenda 2063’ with the programmatic subtitle ‘The Africa We Want’. It is portrayed as ‘Africa’s blueprint and master plan for transforming Africa into the global powerhouse of the future’.1 https://au.int/en/agenda2063/overview African governments are using blueprints of desirable futures, like Kenya’s ambition to become a middle-income country through the realization of the national development plan ‘Vision 2030’, or Ethiopia’s vision of a green economy and a grand renaissance, expressed in the name of the biggest mega-dam of the continent.

What is special about ‘African’ futures – or to put it another way, what makes them ‘African’? The question itself is not at all trivial, as the philosophical reflections in the contributions of Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Ajei in this book clearly show. African futures may be seen as global alternatives, as Felwine Sarr argues in ‘Afrotopia’ (Sarr 2016), but they are at the same time part of global futures. Quite obviously, there are many similarities with the practices and processes of future-making anywhere else in the world. The question of what constitutes a particular identity or ‘Africanness’ with respect to ideas is therefore not easy to answer. Ideas may travel and become universal, so that geographical branding becomes inappropriate. The criterion that may apply here is perhaps not so much the origin, but the ownership of ideas. What makes African futures ‘African’ is first and foremost the views and expectations of Africans themselves: academics, politicians, or ‘ordinary’ people. Understanding these views and expectations is essential, because African future-making will have to cope with the multiple overlapping challenges of climate change, demographic transition, poverty, and increasing vulnerability to natural hazards and food shortages.

Many of these expected challenges and transformative processes will unfold in rural spaces. It is of course self-evident that rural-urban dichotomies do not help to explain the complex relationships between different geographical regions and settlement patterns in Sub-Saharan Africa. This bias is addressed by several of the chapters of this book, because the dynamism of future-making is conventionally associated with urban centres, while the rural is often viewed as the backstage area, a waiting-room of development (as elaborated by Guma, this volume). Yet, much of what affects African futures plays out in rural environments as well and may even become visible there more clearly than in urban centres.

We view the rural not in a dualistic way as the opposite or the absence of the urban, but as a socio-spatial entity that is intertwined with ‘the urban’ and ‘the world’ through various connections, like commodity chains, agro-food systems, migration regimes, information and communication networks, or other global flows in the context of globalization. Boundaries between the rural and the urban are progressively blurred, with urban residential settlements mushrooming in rural areas, multi-local households, new technologies like mobile phones, and digital cash transfers. Woods (2007: 492–4) identifies several general characteristics of the ‘global rural’, including its function as an object for the attraction of foreign investment and large-scale land acquisitions, the changing discourses on ‘nature’ and land use (commercial exploitation vs. conservation), the inscription of marks of globalization (e.g. primary vs. commercial forests), and the impact of new political authorities (e.g. trade agreements). These characteristics overlap in rural areas and turn them into contested spaces of globalization.