Exploring the Future of Science Fiction by African Writers
By Chidiebere Sullivan Nwuguru
As someone deeply fascinated by speculative writing, I have read many science fiction, speculative poems, and literary works that recapture and recreate our realities into borderless futuristic possibilities. However, what intrigued me more was the fact that not so many of these works border specifically on African perception of futurism. Until the emergence of writers like Nnedi Okorafor, Akwaeke Emezi, Tade Thompson, Lauren Beukes, Deji Olukotun, etc, the closest thing to African futurism from the lens of literature was Afrofuturism, which mostly addresses the African-American and Latino-American realities, especially as it concerns technoculture and an enhanced future, alternate to their struggles; not many of these depicts the true understanding of the history and future of Africans. Nnedi Okorafor, however, in 2019, felt the need to clearly distinguish the genre that specifically borders on African background, while capturing the unfiltered contemporary, historical, futuristic, or mythological climate and spheres of African society, and this she called “Africanfuturism”.
Within the Africanfuturism genre is science fiction, speculative poetry, fantasy, jujuism (animist realism), magic realism, horrors, surrealism, and other sub-genres. These sub-genres are explored individually or in combination to demonstrate the limitless possibilities that connect with our future as Africans; these possibilities transcend beyond the limiting boundaries of realism, to give room for the exploration and reinvention of alternate worlds where opportunities abound and everything is possible. In this regard, Nnedi Okroafor’s “Akata Series”, Lauren Beukes’ “Zoo City”, and even Tade Thompson’s “Rosewater”, come to mind, especially with how these works did great jobs in reinventing our worlds as Africans.
Significantly, we have witnessed progressive growth in the genre of Africanfuturism lately, with lots of rich speculative fiction and poetry breaking boundaries and earning enviable heights. Even with the heightened dysfunctions across African political space, we see literary works that challenge these present predicaments with daring optimism that seems to mythologize the African future, in the light that at least at some point, our continent would finally reach its full potential. We see in the 2023 Sillerman First Book Prize winner, “Leaked Footage”, by Abu Bakr Sadiq, how the adversities and insecurities in Northern Nigeria were explored through a futuristic lens to instill hope even amid hardship; this is the sort of possibilities that Africanfuturism guarantees.
Unforgettably, as much as I am chuffed by the recent exponential growth of the Africanfuturism genre, I must acknowledge the impacts of the works of our earlier writers who I believe laid the foundation for the massive strides we are witnessing today. Works like Amos Tutuola’s “The Palm-wine Drinkard”, Ben Okri’s “The Famished Road”, and Christopher Okigbo’s “Moonglow and Other Poems” are the perfect radiative collections of African myth and philosophies brought beyond folklore, to the wider view of the world through stories and poetry; such foundation is what we are witnessing the strides today through the recent breakthroughs of Africanfuturism.
Above all, I believe the future of science fiction in Africa is promising. With Africanfuturism in literature with its promising dividends in offering us an opportunity to reinvent and mythologize our future as Africans, there is a huge surge of sobriety to resuscitate our hope of achieving the Africa of our dream someday in the future, hence, its relevance will remain etched into the fabrics of our society.
