This week’s edition of Slow Digest was written by C21 Graduate Fellow Jamee N. Pritchard.
Slow Futurism in Africanfuturist Science Fiction
As a spatial genre, science fiction challenges readers to perceive the world differently. It reconstructs space and place in relation to race and gender, diaspora and dystopia, and time and temporality. The genre is the perfect lens to explore the concept of slow futurism in the Africanfuturist stories of author Nnedi Okorafor.
What is Slow Futurism?
Slow futurism is a concept that critiques the Euro-Western paradigm of rapid, hyper-technological progress. It aligns with movements like slow technology, slow living, and decolonial temporalities, all of which emphasize intentionality, sustainability, and interconnectedness.
In the context of Africanfuturism, slow futurism provides a way to envision Black futures that:
- Prioritize ancestral knowledge over disruptive innovation.
- Develop technologies in harmony with ecosystems rather than in opposition to them.
- Conceptualize time as nonlinear, layered, and ancestral, rather than as a race toward progress.
The interwoven threads of time and space are central in slow futurism, reminding us that the past is never truly the past, as it coexists with the present and future, continually shaping our identities, experiences, memories, and cultures.
What is Africanfuturism?
Writer Nnedi Okorafor defines Africanfuturism as a sub-category of science fiction that is “concerned with visions of the future, is interested in technology, leaves the earth, skews optimistic, is centered on and predominantly written by people of African descent (black people) and it is rooted first and foremost in Africa. It’s less concerned with ‘what could have been’ and more concerned with ‘what is and can/will be.’ It acknowledges, grapples with and carries ‘what has been’” (Okorafor, “Africanfuturism Defined“)
African culture, history, mythology, and point-of-view as it branches out into the Black Diaspora is central to this storytelling. Okorafor further explains that while Africanfuturism and Afrofuturism both reflect how Black people on the continent and in the Black Diaspora are connected by “blood, spirit, history, and future,” Africanfuturism does not privilege or center the West.
To illustrate this point, Okorafor provides an example from the Marvel movie Black Panther:
Afrofuturism: Wakanda builds its first outpost in Oakland, CA, USA.
Africanfuturism: Wakanda builds its first outpost in a neighboring African country.
Africanfuturism’s connection to slow futurism emerges through its rejection of rapid progression and innovation in favor of a more deliberate and intentional connection to it. Living memory, ecological harmony, and cyclical, nonlinear, time are central to stories like Okorafor’s Noor, Lagoon, and The Book of Phoenix.
Slow Futurism, Africanfuturism, and the Rhythms of Time
Rejection of Rapid Technological Innovation in Noor
Noor follows AO, a Nigerian woman with cybernetic limbs who is forced to flee into the desert after being attacked. There, she meets DNA, a herdsman also on the run, and together, they uncover, and attempt to take down, a corrupt tech conglomerate.
Like much of science fiction, writers in the genre integrate contemporary social commentary into their worlds. In Noor, Okorafor critiques corporate exploitation and the environmental destruction of rapid technological progress. We see the consequences of constant connectivity through social media and mobile devices as well as AO’s journey of self-discovery as she both rejects corporate control of technology and navigates her place in the world as a hybrid human who needs technology to survive. There’s an interesting dichotomy of a future that is both high-tech and deeply rooted in spirituality and African ancestral knowledge.
Collective Change and Ecological Harmony in Lagoon
Okorafor reimagines first contact as an event intertwined with indigenous knowledge, fluid change, and communal transformation. The story challenges the Western narratives of alien invasions that seem to be reenactments of European and settler colonialism – in other words, violent and dehumanizing conquests of indigenous nations.
In the story, an alien visitation off the coast of Lagos, Nigeria, drastically alters the city and its inhabitants. The story follows three central characters – a marine biologist, an army officer, and a rapper – as they navigate the strange transformations and encounters with otherworldly forces. Rather than depicting aliens as invaders seeking domination, Okorafor presents them as catalysts for transformation who work with the local ecosystem to reshape Lagos in ways that are deeply tied to spirituality, folklore, and ecological balance. Relationships among humans, aliens, and the environment are central to the story, and through each of the character’s journeys, we see the process of slow, deliberate adaptation to a changing future.
Living Memory in The Book of Phoenix
In a distant future in Nigeria, a storyteller finds a chamber full of ancient books, and among them, is the Book of Phoenix, a narrative about a genetically enhanced woman with immense power. As he reads the book, Phoenix’s voice takes over the story as she recounts her life as a human experiment trapped in Tower 7, a research facility in a dystopian America. As she discovers the truth about her origins, she ignites a revolution (literally, as her immense power is fire).
This story is the epitome of living memory and our connection to ancestral knowledge. It disrupts linear temporality, positioning the past, present, and future as interconnected through memory, resistance, and the power of storytelling. Again, we have a commentary on the consequences of uncontrolled corporate power and rapid technological change. More importantly, however, we have a depiction of revolution and renewal that questions ethics, oppression, and the intentionality of building a sustainable future. Of course, that sustainable future comes by the total destruction of the existing power structures.
Okorafor’s works illustrate the key concepts of slow futurism by centering indigenous African knowledge systems, harmonious relationships with nature and environment, living archives of ancestral memory, and the slow, yet intentional, building of sustainable futures in Africa and the Black Diaspora. Her stories envision worlds where progress is deliberate, ethical, and relational, where the past, present, and future exist in an evolving dialogue.
Further Reading on Slow Futurism and Afro/Africanfuturism
The Wormwood Trilogy: Rosewater, The Rosewater Insurrection, and The Rosewater Redemption by Tade Thompson
Tade Thompson’s Wormwood Trilogy is a story of an alien invasion in the town of Rosewater in a future Nigeria. It follows Kaaro, a government agent that has been transformed by the alien biodome. As humanity grapples with alien integration, Kaaro uncovers secrets about the extraterrestrial presence, government conspiracies, and his own abilities. The series explores colonialism, memory, biotechnological evolution, and the complexities of human-alien coexistence.
“Afrofuturism, Africanfuturism, and the Language of Black Speculative Fiction” by Hope Wabuke
Wabuke, H. (2020, August 27). Afrofuturism, Africanfuturism, and the Language of Black Speculative Literature. Los Angeles Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/afrofuturism-africanfuturism-and-the-language-of-black-speculative-literature/
Hope Wabuke distinguishes Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism. She explains that Afrofuturism blends Black culture and speculative fiction to reclaim narratives, while Africanfuturism is grounded in African traditions and postcolonial realities. Wabuke explores how Black writers like Nnedi Okorafor and Tade Thompson use speculative fiction to envision alternative futures, reclaim power, and challenge Western dominance, emphasizing storytelling as resistance that redefines Black identities and possibilities for the future.