Fear, Tradition, and Climate Change in African Sci-Fi

When the writer Nnedi Okorafor coined the term Africanfuturism, she wanted to distinguish sci-fi written about Africa from Afrofuturism, which is focuses on the experiences of Black people in the diaspora. Africanfuturism mixes the traditional with the futuristic in a way that resembles modern life in Africa, and many of these stories grapple with climate change. Although the writer Chinelo Onwualu says cli-fi isn’t a subgenre for African writers. It’s often baked into a lot of Africanfuturism because the continent is already at the forefront of climate emergencies. And the writers Suyi Davies Okungbowa and Wole Talabi explain that Africanfuturist cli-fi isn’t as dystopian as Western cli-fi. These visions of the future may feel daunting but there is often a sense of hope and the solutions are more community focused. The actress Nneka Okoye reads from their stories, and other works by African writers.

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Reading list from this episode:

• Works of Nnedi Okorafor
• Wole Talabi’s anthology Convergence Problems
• Suyi Davies Okungbowa's novella Lost Ark Dreaming
• Chinelo Onwualu’s short story Letters to My Mother
• Dilman Dila’s story The Leafy Man from the book A Killing in the Sun
• Mame Bougouma’s story Lekki Lekki from Africanfuturism: An Anthology
• Omenana Magazine

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