'Africanfuturism: Wanuri Kahiu's and Nnedi Okorafor's Counter-Visions of Development'

This presentation argues that Africanfuturism provides counter-visions of the future that are urgently needed to combat climate capitalism. It reads Wanuri Kahiu’s film Pumzi (2009) and Nnedi Okorafor’s novel The Book of Phoenix (2015) against the hostile projections that have been used by what Kodwo Eshun calls the “futures industry” to render Africa the site of “absolute dystopia.”

Specifically, it situates Asha’s rebellious quest in Pumzi to plant the Mother Tree after a water war in future East African Territory in the context of the 2009-11 drought in Kenya, and the structural adjustment programs imposed by the World Bank and the IMF since the 1980s. Asha’s efforts resemble those of environmentalist Wangari Maathai, about whom Kahiu directed a documentary film in 2009. While, as Maathai pointed out, indigenous Kikuyu culture was often derided as “primitive,” she used some of its principles to build the Green Belt Movement. Correlatively, by showing Asha planting a sacred Mũgumo tree, Kahiu transposes aspects of Kikuyu culture to a science fictional future and creates a counter-image of futurity.

Similarly, The Book of Phoenix provides a counter-vision to the future scenarios devised by multinational corporations such as Royal Dutch Shell. By portraying a future in which Shell and other oil companies build androids to indiscriminately kill anyone who tries to siphon oil from their pipelines in the Niger delta, The Book of Phoenix puts into question Shell’s projections of the future and their claim that corporate responsibility is sufficient to ensure the harmonious extraction of resources in an unregulated economy. Both Kahiu and Okorafor turn to science fiction as a means of constructing counter-visions of development, and thereby make what Eshun describes as chronopolitical interventions into the production and distribution of African futures.