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Ideas & Philosophy

Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism: Imagining Africa's Tomorrow

From Sun Ra's cosmic jazz to Wakanda and the novels of Nnedi Okorafor, artists have imagined futures in which Africa and its peoples are at the centre. What is Afrofuturism, and why do some prefer "Africanfuturism"?

By Amos Hope Jnr · · 4 min read

Illustration of a woman in kente-patterned dress overlooking a futuristic African city of carved towers, gardens and flying craft at sunset

A spaceship shaped like a pyramid. A city of gleaming towers built by an African nation that was never colonised. A young Himba woman, her hair coated in red clay, travelling to study at an intergalactic university. These are images from Afrofuturism, a movement in literature, music, film, art and fashion that imagines futures, and alternative pasts, centred on Africa and people of African descent.

Where the word came from

The term Afrofuturism was coined by the American cultural critic Mark Dery in 1993, in an essay called "Black to the Future". He asked why so few African Americans wrote science fiction, given that, as he put it, Black Americans were in a sense the descendants of people abducted by aliens, taken across an ocean to a strange land. He used "Afrofuturism" to describe the work of Black artists who used science fiction and technology to explore Black experience and imagine Black futures.

But the ideas existed long before the word. Among the pioneers often cited are:

  • Sun Ra (1914–1993), the American jazz musician who claimed to come from Saturn, wore Egyptian-inspired costumes and made the film Space Is the Place (1974), in which he offers Black people a new home in outer space.
  • George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, whose 1970s concerts featured a giant spaceship, the "Mothership".
  • Writers such as Octavia E. Butler and Samuel R. Delany, who brought Black characters and perspectives into science fiction.

Africa in the picture

Afrofuturism draws heavily on African imagery: ancient Egypt, the Dogon and their legendary knowledge of the stars, masks, textiles, hairstyles and myths. Our story on the Dogon and Sirius explores one famous source of such imagery, and how much of it rests on contested evidence.

The most famous recent example is the film Black Panther (2018), set in the fictional African nation of Wakanda, a technologically advanced kingdom that was never colonised. Its costumes, designed by Ruth E. Carter, drew on Maasai beadwork, Basotho blankets, Zulu headdresses, Ndebele rings and many other African traditions. The film was a global phenomenon and brought Afrofuturist ideas to hundreds of millions of viewers.

Africanfuturism

Some African writers have argued that "Afrofuturism", as originally defined, centres the experiences and imagination of the African diaspora, especially in the United States, rather than Africa itself. In 2019, the Nigerian-American novelist Nnedi Okorafor proposed the term Africanfuturism for science fiction that is "specifically and more directly rooted in African culture, history, mythology and point-of-view", and that does not necessarily centre the West.

Okorafor's own novels are among the most celebrated examples:

  • Who Fears Death (2010), set in a post-apocalyptic Sudan.
  • Lagoon (2014), in which aliens land in the sea off Lagos.
  • The Binti novellas (from 2015), about a Himba girl who leaves home to attend a university among the stars. Binti won both the Hugo and Nebula awards.

Other African writers working in speculative fiction include Tade Thompson (Rosewater), Wole Talabi, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, Lauren Beukes of South Africa and many more. Anthologies such as AfroSF (2012) have showcased their work.

On screen and in art

African filmmakers have also explored the future:

  • Pumzi (2009), a short film by the Kenyan director Wanuri Kahiu, set in a future East Africa after water wars.
  • Iwájú (2024), an animated series set in a futuristic Lagos, created by the Nigerian-founded studio Kugali in collaboration with Disney.

Visual artists, photographers, fashion designers and musicians across the continent use futuristic imagery to question the present and imagine alternatives, from Afrobeats music videos to fashion shoots that blend traditional textiles with science-fiction styling.

Why imagine the future?

Why does Afrofuturism matter? Several reasons stand out:

  • Representation. For too long, science fiction imagined futures in which people of African descent were absent or marginal. Afrofuturism insists that Africans and their descendants will shape the future.
  • Reclaiming the past. Many Afrofuturist works look back to Africa's history and myths, connecting them to the future, an idea related to the Akan symbol Sankofa, which teaches us to return for what we have left behind.
  • Critique. Speculative fiction can comment on real problems, such as colonialism, inequality, environmental destruction and technology, by imagining their consequences.
  • Hope. By imagining prosperous, free and creative African futures, artists inspire people to work towards them.

The idea connects to a long tradition of African thought about liberation and unity, including the dreams of a united, self-reliant Africa explored in our story on Pan-Africanism.

Why it matters

Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism show that the future is not something that happens only in Silicon Valley or in Hollywood. It can be imagined from Lagos, Nairobi, Johannesburg, Accra and Kinshasa, rooted in African languages, myths and values. In telling these stories, artists are not only predicting the future. They are helping to create it.

Further reading

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