ARAMIDE MORONFOYE · OCTOBER 7, 2020
Like other forms of art, science fiction possesses the peculiar power to both prophesy and inspire.
The term “science fiction” covers a broad variety of media: short stories in sci-fi mags, brick-like novels in a trilogy, indie films, video games, children’s cartoons – and even music (see “prog rock” and Janelle Monae).
Dexter’s Laboratory was one of my favourite cartoons growing up. And it probably has something to do with why I’ve wanted to be a scientist since I was a kid.
Now, climate change is the stuff of science fiction nightmares, no question. In fact, for those who are already reasonably informed about the impacts of climate change, it’s easy to feel like we’re just a few years away from one of those post-apocalyptic American dystopias, where none of the houses have roofs, and everyone is fighting for cornflakes in the grocery store.
Climate change is a phenomenon that is actively threatening global food and water security, as well generating more extreme flooding events, droughts, wildfires and public health perils. But did you know that for people living in Africa the situation is, on average, much more dire?
Climate activism has made some progress over the last few years. Many nations that adopted the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement (to limit global average temperature rise to no more than 20C) have made efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions by passing carbon taxes, limiting the sale of fossil fuel vehicles, and so on.
However, there’s still a lack of diversity in climate change discourse
Black and brown communities and developing nations – including most African nations – are amongst those that are most likely to be hurt by the impacts of climate disasters. Yet, these groups are grossly underrepresented in climate science research and are least likely to be part of the global conversation in general.
According to a 2008 article, titled Africa and Climate Change, written by the United Nations University, the African continent has been dealing with the effects of climate change since the 1970s. And it’s easy to see that in the long-run, the lack of diversity in climate discourse will have devastating consequences as the entire world tries to adapt to survive climate change.
In this post, I’m going to (1) return to our discussion on science fiction, touching on its meaning and purpose and (2) talk about climate change: what it is and exactly what it means for African nations in general. Next, I’m going to (3) explore why science fiction is a powerful tool to galvanise progress and to magnify African voices in global discussions about climate change.
To illustrate how African science fiction offers a fascinating medium to talk about the big issues, I’ll reference these fictional works by some brilliant African creators:
Spider the Artist by Nnedi Okorafor
What the Dead Man Said by Chinelo Onwualu
War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi
Thirstlands by Nick Wood
Poison Fish by Nnedi Okorafor
Pumzi by Wahiu Kanuri
Who Fears Death? by Nnedi Okorafor
Rosewater Trilogy by Tade Thompson
Many of these I found by digging through a list compiled by the African Speculative Fiction Society that details all African speculative fiction ever published (last updated June 2020). In addition to these, you can also expect a few Star Trek fan girl moments…
What is Science Fiction?
Generally, there’s no consensus on the definition of science fiction. However, most people tend to agree that science fiction deals with fictional worlds in which plot and character arcs play out against a backdrop of evolution in science and technology. This is great news for us because it means that science fiction is the WHAT-IF? genre, the genre of visionaries.
In this article, the subgenres of science fiction we care most about include Afrofuturism – which we’ll get to later – and eco-fiction (environment or nature-oriented fiction).
Also, we’ll get into 2 of eco-fiction’s sub-subgenres: cli-fi and solar punk. Cli-fi is fiction that deals with climate change, while solar punk is a genre of science-fiction that is characteristically hopeful about the unknown, in view of present-day environmental fears.
Science-Fiction and Its Grand Purpose
In science fiction we get to run all sorts of thought-experiments. For example, we can ask questions about the bloom of consciousness in anything from flesh-eating plants to artificial intelligence (AI). Speaking of AI, in Spider The Artist – Nigerian-American Nnedi Okorafor’s short story – the Nigerian government, in partnership with several oil companies, builds a swarm of eight-legged robots, which repair and protect oil pipelines in the Niger Delta by brutally attacking anyone who comes too close.
One of these robots defies its base programming. Rather than protecting the pipeline, it falls in love with music by sitting and listening to a lonely woman with a guitar.
Gratuitous Star Trek Mention
With science fiction we get to immerse ourselves in wildly entertaining post-scarcity worlds where discrimination based on gender identity, sexual orientation and race is a thing of the past; where human beings very casually marry extra-terrestrial beings; where humankind’s best and brightest mission is to fling itself headfirst into a yawning universe stuffed with unnamed wonders (see Star Trek).
We get to explore a few out of a gazillion timelines, where humanity survives The Apocalypse okay.
Science fiction brings us face to face with all the disasters that are on their way. But it also allows us to ask the hard questions about disasters that are already happening – though slowly enough that we try to ignore them. We get to explore a few out of a gazillion timelines, where humanity survives The Apocalypse okay, rebuilding an even better world after the worst is over. And other timelines where things go completely pear-shaped.
I believe the purpose of science fiction, with all its subgenres, is to challenge norms, to encourage hope, to send ripples through the imagination, to inspire wonder, to provide caution.
And now, speaking of “caution”, we’ll move onto one of the most underrated threats to the human species of all time: climate change.
What Is Climate Change, Anyway?
Even with all the fuss being made about climate change in the news and in academic spheres, for many of us, climate change is like a distant, faceless blob monster. We’re pretty sure it’s happening, and we’re pretty sure it’s not a good thing. And…that’s it.
But what is climate change? This NASA article defines climate change as “a long-term change in the average weather patterns that [now] define Earth’s local, regional and global climates.”
Here, “long-term” usually means at least 30 years.
It’s very, very likely – larger than a 95% probability – that human activities are the cause of [global warming] .
Climate change is the combined result of our activities as we go about our human lives and natural processes like shifting ocean patterns, changes in the Sun’s radiation and volcanic activity.
Since the mid 19th to early 20th century, scientists have observed a distinct heating of Earth’s climate system. This heating trend is dominating the current evolution of the climate. The heating is what we call global warming, and it’s usually quantified using “global average temperature”.
It’s very, very likely – larger than a 95% probability – that human activities are the cause of the heating. Thus, when most people use the term “climate change”, they’re referring to this “climate system heating”, which is overwhelmingly a result of the things human beings do. In this article, this is also how I’ll use the term.
How do we know all this about climate change?
Well, scientists take all sorts of data into account. They take observations from air, ground and space and feed them into theoretical models. These models can then make projections about future climate change and provide reliable estimations of past and present climate patterns.
Additionally, climate data records, such as tree rings, sediments in the ocean, ice cores and corals, contain evidence of global temperature increase, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and a lot more.
What “Human Activities” Are Responsible?
Burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas releases billions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere every year. This is one of the greatest contributors to the current warming of the climate system. Other notable contributors include deforestation and even livestock farming, the latter being a source of around 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Greenhouse gases, like CO2, water vapour, methane and nitrous oxide – CO2 being one of the most dominant contributors to human-induced warming – stay a long time in Earth’s atmosphere and trap more and more heat in the atmosphere through a mechanism called the greenhouse effect. This heat-trapping mechanism is the root cause of climate change. Ironically, it’s also what makes Earth warm enough for us to live on in the first place. However, too much of a good thing…
Pandemics
Those human activities that are root contributors to climate change, such as deforestation and fossil fuel burning, also happen to increase our vulnerability to pandemics.
Take deforestation. Deforestation has resulted in habitat loss, causing animal migration patterns to change and putting animals in contact with other animal species and human beings they wouldn’t otherwise have crossed paths with. This causes pathogens to spread in unpredictable and potentially deadly ways.
Burning of fossil fuels, too, hikes up the amount of air pollution, which increases the risk of death when it comes to respiratory illnesses like COVID-19.
Global Average Temperature Rise
Since the beginning of the pre-industrial period (around mid-19th century), human activities are estimated to have raised global average temperature (GAT) by up to 10 C Celsius. GAT is also rising 0.2 degrees Celsius every decade.
These figures might seem like not too big a deal, but as we’ll soon find out, the effects are anything but.
Effects of Climate Change
First, let’s take a quick look at the global picture. Globally, climate change will result in destabilised ecosystems, weakened food security, more bush fires and heatwaves in some regions, more floods in others and general deterioration of infrastructure.
And even public health won’t go unscathed. Average global temperatures and rainfall patterns are two factors that influence how pathogens spread, and climate change has altered both. It’s been observed that climate change has made it easier for diseases like malaria, dengue fever and Lyme disease to infect more people.
Put simply, climate change really, really sucks.
However, for African nations specifically, tack on one more “really”, douse everything in gasoline and then strike a match.
Impacts of Climate Change in Africa
The African continent has contributed historically negligible amounts to total global greenhouse gas emissions but is disproportionately exposed to its devastating effects.
In 2019, for example, cyclones hit Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, disrupting over 3 million lives. Climate model projections show that extreme weather conditions like these are going to be showing up more often and in less predictable ways. Furthermore, the millions of people in Africa’s highly populated, low-elevation coastal zones, are going to be the hardest hit.
If (the lack of) climate action continues as is, it’s only going to get worse. And not just worse over the next few decades, but over the next few years.
With rising sea levels, salt-content of inland water will rise, depleting water resources for drinking and agriculture. Also, the increasing acidity and temperature of oceans will mean bad news for fish populations and the people who depend on them for their livelihood.
And did I already mention the ruined roads? Salinity from sea-level rise and floods will damage roads by causing land to sink or by inducing cracking and blistering. As someone who lives in Lagos, Nigeria (a city along the Gulf of Guinea’s coast), who already has a painful relationship with Lagos traffic, worse roads are definitely not something anyone needs.
If (the lack of) climate action continues as is, it’s only going to get worse. And not just worse over the next few decades, but over the next few years. Think: an estimated GDP exposure by 2023 of up to HALF of Africa’s GDP in African countries most vulnerable to extreme events. Think: millions of Africans driven into extreme poverty past 2040, more than everywhere else in the world.
Climate Change Is Mostly Irreversible
Climate change, in the long-term, is irreversible. This means that for African nations to have any hope of surviving climate change’s effects, climate action and adaptation are a huge must – not a “maybe”.
The truth is that even if emissions are cut down to near-zero during the 21st century, the characteristics of the climate system make it so that we’ll still be dealing with a warmer climate – and all the issues that come with it – for centuries to come. The next step – after cutting greenhouse gas emissions and adapting our societies to climate change – would be to deal with this long-term global warming.
African Science Fiction and The Apocalypse
An apocalypse is an event of catastrophic destruction. For all intents and purposes, the effects of climate change are not far off. Several African science fiction creators have envisioned some of the bleak futures discussed above, and their work provides a more intimate experience of environmental disaster, in a way that statistics might not.
For example, Chinelo Onwualu’s short story, What The Dead Man Said, is solid cli-fi, exploring Earth after mass migrations and “the Catastrophe”, a period between the 2020s and 2060s where climate disasters have “scorched half the world and drowned the rest”. Onwualu is of Nigerian descent, and her story takes us to the secessionist state of New Biafra, which is formed after Igbo separatists declare independence from a Nigeria that has collapsed in the wake of the Catastrophe.
Similarly, Tochi Onyebuchi’s novel, War Girls, imagines Earth in the 2170s after nuclear war and climate change have ravaged the entire planet. In his book, much of Nigeria is turning into desert, shorelines are being “gobbled” up by water, and two sisters from the secessionist state of Biafra have to fight to survive a brutal civil war.
So, what do we have so far? Climate disasters, check. Mass migrations, check. Drought, war, check, check.
Water Scarcity
In the midst of economic and environmental “apocalypses”, those already living at the poverty line tend to get the shorter end of the stick. This is another reality that science fiction has tackled.
Nick Wood, a South African writer, envisions a world in Thirstlands where everything has been covered in drought, and water resources have been privatised so that only the rich don’t have to go thirsty.
In Nnedi Okorafor’s vibrant short story, Poison Fish, a 50-m tall wall separates the south side of Chicago from the rest of the city. On the south side, populated mainly by black and brown people, the only affordable source of water is unfiltered lake water from the Lake Michigan.
In Poison Fish, the Lake Michigan is so polluted that bioluminescent fish, which scientists have modified to glow in polluted water, never stop glowing. On the other side of the wall, coincidentally, the rich have access to all the water filters and affordable bottled water they want.
Water scarcity, check. Systemic inequality, check.
When you can visualise the real, everyday effects of climate change, that “distant, blob monster”, is suddenly right in your backyard, and you might find that it’s grown teeth and claws.
Why Africans Must Tell Their Own Story
Right from colonial times, African stories have been ignored, stereotyped or lost in the fray. Basically, when the folks at the top of the power pyramid tell your own story for you, valuable chunks of your identity go missing.
Similarly, when it comes to climate activism, African voices are rarely heard.
Earlier this year, The Associated Press (AP) was widely criticised for cropping Ugandan climate activist, Vanessa Nakate, out of a feature photo taken during a press conference at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland.
While we can reasonably say that the AP meant no real harm, this little photo-cropping incident was breathtaking in its symbolism.
The original, uncropped photo showed Nakate (the only black, African activist present) with Greta Thunberg, Isabelle Axelsson, Luisa Neubauer and Loukina Tille, all activists in the Fridays of the Future movement. This movement, by the way, was popularised by Thunberg to protest the lack of action in combatting climate change.
While we can reasonably assume that the AP meant no harm, this little photo-cropping incident was breathtaking in its symbolism.
“When I saw the photo, I only saw part of my jacket. I was not on the list of participants. None of my comments from the press conference were included,” Nakate said. “It was like I wasn’t even there.”
Erasing A Continent or The Need For Diversity
In serious discussions about global security and the environment, the voices of poorer, developing nations (a sizeable number of which are in Africa) are given much less weight. Never mind that these developing nations are usually the most vulnerable to climate disasters.
About the Davos fiasco, Nakate went on to say in a tweet, “You didn’t just erase a photo. You erased a continent.”
Africans, especially those who live in the continent, possess an intimate knowledge of the struggles and triumphs unique to the region. They can both pinpoint the issues that urgently need attention and prescribe the shape the solution should take.
One huge problem with a lack of diversity in climate activism or discourse is that the solutions people come up with are often flawed and inadequate. When Africans have a voice to tell their own story, there is greater nuance in the approach to problem-solving. This nuance is the fuel for progress.
In this way, giving Africans a louder voice is where science fiction can be a boon.
A Tradition of African Science Fiction
There’s a fascinating legend attributed to the Dogon people of Mali. It goes back thousands of years, all the way to 3200 BCE. According to the legend, the star, Sirius, has an extremely dense companion star that is invisible to the human eye. This companion star has a 50-year elliptical orbit around Sirius while also rotating on its own axis. The Dogon people are said to have received this information from the Nommos, a race of extra-terrestrial amphibious life forms.
Funny story: Sirius does actually have a companion star fitting all the criteria. The only problem is that the legend is supposedly older than any technology on Earth that could have discovered it.
While I wouldn’t call this tale science ‘fiction’, seeing as the legend probably wasn’t meant to be interpreted that way, I do think it’s a captivating example of how African people have used stories to interrogate a universe that, on its own, can seem reluctant to be known.
This has to be the most ‘science fiction-y’ thing ever.
Amongst several African creators, there’s a slowly growing body of science fiction and other speculative genres, all of which are classified under an umbrella term I mentioned at the beginning: Afrofuturism.
Afrofuturism
The term Afrofuturism was coined by an African American writer named Mark Dery, who defined it in his 1994 essay Black To The Future as “African-American speculative fiction and signification”. However, time has slowly expanded its meaning to include science fiction of entirely African origin as well.
In Afrofuturism, there’s a vein of spirituality that spins through everything. This spirituality offers a freedom that allows artists to combine tradition with science and technology.
As Sofia Samatar observes in her essay, Afrofuturism dismisses the idea that traditional African cosmology is “primitive”, that technological advancement must look “western” to be valid or that spirituality belies modernity.
Instead, Afrofuturists recreate history, through literature, visual arts and music, in ways that treat their people more graciously than real life ever did. In that way, Afrofuturists play a central role in recounting their history and a central role in exploring their future.
Pumzi
Pumzi, Kenyan Wanuri Kahiu’s haunting short film, falls squarely into the Afrofuturism genre. The film is set several decades after World War 3 (the Water War), when water is an extremely scarce resource, and everyone tirelessly recycles their sweat and urine to survive.
One day, the film’s protagonist, Asha, receives a soil sample along with a set of coordinates from an anonymous source. After she tests the soil, she finds it mysteriously free of any of the radiation that is commonplace in this post-war world. This radiation combined with water scarcity prevents anything from growing.
In Afrofuturism, science and spirituality, technology and folklore, work hand in hand to transcend laws of space and time.
Next, Asha takes a deep whiff of the soil, and she’s thrust into a vision where she’s floundering inside a deep pool of water and then, a huge tree rises towards her from the horizon.
When she shares her findings about the soil, Asha is shut down by her community’s leaders. However, both technology (the tests) and her visions help her maintain the conviction that there is still life outside the confined community. Asha takes a seed tree from the community’s natural museum and buries it in the non-radioactive soil. To her delight, in no time at all, it blooms.
In Afrofuturism, science and spirituality, technology and folklore, work hand in hand to transcend laws of space and time.
We Need More African Science Fiction About Environmental Issues
Science fiction about environmental change has been a rapidly growing branch of literature in the last few years. However, only a tiny fraction of the work in this genre is coming out of Africa. Believe it or not, I’ve already mentioned most of the African fraction in this article.
While Africa has a long history of speculative fiction in general, science fiction – both environmental and otherwise – is only slowly gaining momentum. Though admittedly, AfroSF, an anthology of short speculative fiction, written entirely by African writers, is making some progress on the environmental front with its call for submissions of all eco-fiction for its 4th publication (AfroSF4).
All the same, reasons for the African science fiction “slow-going” are not easy to pinpoint. It could be that African creators feel they have bigger fish to fry, that for their work to be taken seriously as literature, for it to mean something, that it must concern itself only with realism, with analyses of political corruption, unemployment and poverty. You know, the “real” African problems.
It could also be that the reasons are far more subtle to be explained in a single paragraph.
Science Fiction Speaks To Everything
In any case, I’d argue that the central themes of science fiction, including bold exploration and challenging the status quo, have always been relevant to the African consciousness.
Additionally, critiques of bad leadership, unemployment, poverty, corruption, these issues that are supposedly more pertinent to Africa, are, in fact, perfect for the revolutionary and rebellious nature of science fiction. Just look at Poison Fish where a group of rebels tear down the 50-m tall wall keeping them from clean water (or Tade Thompson’s Rosewater Trilogy, or for a non-African example, The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin).
Moreover, the sky is everywhere.
Moreover, the sky is everywhere. As I’ve noted in this article, global warming will not confine itself to the clouds hanging above nations which produce the most carbon emissions. It does not discriminate. Climate change is as much an African fight as is poverty and corruption.
We need more African science fiction – eco-fiction in particular – that tackles the afro-centric experience in a daring, attention-grabbing way.
Superhero movies, many of which are arguably science fiction, have been a hit in Africa. A quintessentially Afrofuturist film, Marvel’s Black Panther, saw roaring success across the board, with Africans turning up to cinemas in traditional accoutrements, dancing and singing, and being all round joyful nuisances at the sight of complex characters who looked like them and of cultures that looked like theirs in such a huge western production. I may or may not have been one of these people.
The movie industry is also expanding quickly in Africa. Nigeria’s film industry, Nollywood, the largest in Africa, is worth billions of dollars. As the African population becomes increasingly (and rapidly) tech savvy, more and more people are going to want to see their experiences represented in, perhaps, atypical genres of film, literature, video games, and other media. Of course, Africans themselves are the people to make this happen.
Science Fiction as A Tool for Change
Adapt or perish, now as ever, is Nature’s inexorable imperative.
– H.G. Wells
I’m going to share some (more) bad news now.
If there are no broad changes globally in how we run our societies, a 30C increase in global average temperature (GAT) from preindustrial levels will reduce Africa’s GDP by 8.6% chunks every year after the year 2100. However, by keeping any rise in temperature below 1.50C, this figure falls to less than half the amount of GDP reductions yearly.
Staying Below the Carbon Quota
We have a 50/50 chance of keeping the GAT increase to less than 20 C by capping total global CO2 emissions below at least 820 billion tonnes of carbon. As massive as this quantity sounds, it won’t be a walk in the park to achieve. Actually, it’s nerve-wracking to think that we could easily slip past this carbon quota with just another few decades in our current climate trajectory.
In order to stay below the quota, radical changes are needed. For one thing, we’d have to cut global carbon emissions by an average of at least 5.5% every year. This would mean abandoning a massive fraction of the fossil fuel reserves still left unburned. In a world where most people still rely on fossil fuels to power everything from their vehicles to their factories, this would require massive collective action and global unity to accomplish.
Climate Adaptation
Next, while it’s true that African nations are nowhere near the major contributors of global greenhouse gas emissions, African societies still need to adapt to the realities of climate change or be chewed up and spat out somewhere down the line.
Adaptation would cut across several sectors. There’d need to be more investment into renewable energy options, reforestation efforts, sustainable land and food use systems, water resources management, climate science research and more. This will cost a ton of money, no doubt. But the price of doing nothing would cost much more.
In Africa, the cost of doing nothing ranges from around 1.6 times (in Kenya) to more than 20 times (in Niger) the cost of adaptation. And failing to factor in climate change into present and future hydropower design (i.e. water dams), could increase the cost of energy for the everyday person by several factors of what it is now.
It’s not all doom and gloom
Some African countries are already taking the lead in the global fight against climate change.
South Africa, for example, passed a Carbon Tax Act that came into effect in 2019. The act puts specific levies on greenhouse gas emissions from industrial activities and fossil fuel burning. Other examples are Morocco, which has erected the world’s largest solar energy facility with the aim of reaching a 52% renewable energy target by 2030, and Nigeria, with a 30% renewable energy target by the same year.
Efficient climate adaptation […] could overcome extreme poverty.
Many African nations already have an edge in that they’re rich in renewables like wind, solar and geothermal resources. This makes a shift to all renewables and universal energy access even more attainable.
Also, in addition to reducing carbon emissions, adaptation of food and land use systems could deliver up to hundreds of billions of dollars across sub-Saharan Africa every single year by 2030.
Efficient climate adaptation would lower infrastructure maintenance costs, increase water availability for the rapidly growing population, create millions of new low-carbon jobs, improve food security and could overcome extreme poverty.
In essence, climate adaptation is a tremendous opportunity to improve the standard of living everywhere in Africa.
With that said, how can science fiction chip in as we work toward this new world?
1. Inspire Technological Innovation
You might not be aware, but science fiction has had a pretty huge impact on contemporary science and technology. Take communication satellites, for instance. The idea of radio waves bouncing off satellites for long-distance communication was first explored in Arthur C. Clarke’s speculative manuscript in 1945. Today this mode of communication is mainstream.
Also, did you know that the communicators used in the original Star Trek series of the 1960s were the inspiration for Motorola’s first cell phones?
The influence of science fiction on science and technology, while not easy to measure, is bold-faced and on the rise. Science fiction influences theoretical approaches in research studies, as well as explorations of new forms of interaction between computers and humans.
Good science fiction is usually a celebration of the imagination.
Technology in African Science Fiction
In Spider The Artist, for example, where one music-loving, eight-legged robot bonds deeply with a human and learns to compose its own music, the robot would have been programmed with a cocktail of neural networks trained to develop self-awareness; to differentiate weapon from musical instrument, aggressive body language from passivity; trained to walk and to turn left or right at a bend in the road, etc. While we certainly don’t want eight-legged robots running around beating people up, the underlying design is a lot of fun to think about!
In Tochi Onyebuchi’s War Girls, there’s technology that zaps the earth with electric charges to release soil water trapped in its pores. Next, the “water-capture” in Nnedi Okorafor’s novel, Who Fears Death, takes humidity from the air and condenses it into drinking water. These two are examples of interesting tech proposed to combat water stress in fictional worlds. Interestingly, something like Okorafor’s water-capture or “atmospheric water generator” tech, has actually existed since pre-Columbian America!
Science fiction is a celebration of the imagination. It’s an exercise in taking what you know and extrapolating into the future. From imagination, comes reflection, and from reflection, unexpectedly innovative ideas.
As wild as it might sound, science fiction could lead to the design of cost-effective and unusual technologies for climate action, suitable for African societies. And while providing a colourful space to discuss climate issues, it could inspire a new wave of young, African scientists, who are passionate about unconventional ideas.
2. Raise Awareness
The problem with a lack of awareness is that nobody ever acts until its too late. Science fiction has the ability to paint horrifying but plausible images of the future. And in doing so, to remind us of what we must avoid.
Remember the 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow? Questionable science aside, this film probably did more to raise public awareness about the threat of climate change than the thousands of academic papers available.
Literature, film, TV series and art in general have the ability to hook people right in the feelings. And when people are emotionally invested, they’re more willing to make sacrifices, to fight for change. Science fiction can transform the distant, faceless monster into something more urgent, in a way that only facts and figures can’t.
You don’t need to know what “ozone” is or understand environmental fluid dynamics, to appreciate art.
Science fiction is so suited for this because, for one thing, it’s unintimidating in a way that STEM might not be for everyone. For another, it’s attractive to young people, who are often the catalysts for change.
In addition, Afrofuturist art is accessible to most, regardless of socio-economic status or education level. You don’t need to know what “ozone” is or to understand environmental fluid dynamics, to appreciate art.
Science fiction could also play a role in galvanising change at an individual level, making sustainable habits, like taking shorter showers, eating less meat and using LED bulbs, much more fashionable.
And speaking globally, it goes without saying that having more African narratives in circulation puts African experiences on the global radar. This could lead to more funding for both adaptation and relief projects in Africa as well increased international investment in African talent.
The Responsibility to Tell the Truth
All that said, if our goal is to both entertain and educate with fiction, we all bear a responsibility to convey the actual reality of climate change.
In Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World, there’s a portion where he points out (hilariously) that Star Trek’s Commander Spock, the half-Vulcan half-human first officer of The Enterprise, is genetically even less likely to exist than a half-human and half-artichoke hybrid. Spock, though one of my favourite characters, technically shouldn’t exist.
Why? Because evolution. Taking it as a given that a being who evolved independently on the planet of Vulcan could ever procreate with a human being from the planet Earth is a humongous stretch to say the least.
Still, no harm done, right? No one watches Star Trek for a consistent analysis of genetics. (Though it would definitely be wonderful to have more accurate science portrayed in fiction for educational purposes).
However, when it comes to using our art to talk about environmental change, the stakes are much higher. In order to motivate action in the right direction, to ensure that we never water down the severity or misrepresent the effects of climate change, it is important that we place value on verifiable fact, right from the start. This means no overdramatisation to win entertainment points and no distracting from truth.
Luckily for us, climate change is a well-documented phenomenon. Accuracy shouldn’t be too difficult to attain.
3. Offer Hope
Hope is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all.
— Emily Dickinson
Hopeful science fiction – solar punk – has to be my favourite sub-genre of the lot. Solar punk offers the blueprints of the world that might exist beyond The Apocalypse, the world we all yearn for. Solar punk nurtures the optimism we need to strive for this world. This is probably why the post-scarcity imaginings of Star Trek have won so many loyal fans over generations.
When we’re emotionally invested in a better future, even one we might not be around to see, it’s easier to work toward it.
Sacrifice
One common theme that ran through every piece of African science fiction I’ve discussed in this article was sacrifice. But I can’t say too much without spoiling their endings.
Still, the theme plays out in real life too. For concrete progress to happen, we need to give something in return: an old way of life, our pride, our time, or our money.
Solar punk offers the blueprints of the world that might exist beyond the Apocalypse, the world we all yearn for. Solar punk nurtures the optimism we need to strive for this world.
In the second half of Pumzi, which is arguably a solar punk film, the protagonist, Asha, escapes from her community with the seed tree and stumbles about in a parched, radioactive wasteland in search of the huge tree she saw in her dreams, armed with a compass and the set of coordinates. She finds the origin of the non-radioactive soil. However, to her anguish, she sees that her tree doesn’t exist.
But then Asha goes on to dig and plant the seed tree in the non-radioactive earth. She takes the last of her drinking water, wipes the sweat from her body and uses both to anoint the baby tree.
Finally, she curls up around the seed tree and pulls her veil over her head. She’s resigned, and she’s weary. But she’s also hopeful, I think.
I don’t believe any real form of sacrifice or collective action is possible without the hope that something can change. And looking at the work of civil rights activists of times past, we observe that this is true no matter what sort of “justice” we’re talking about: environmental or otherwise. Dreaming is crucial.
Conclusion
Climate change has the potential to do (more) devastating damage and to disrupt hundreds of millions of lives in Africa. Cutting greenhouse gas emissions and creating more sustainable villages, towns and cities, is what we desperately need for the preservation of lives and the environment in general.
Science fiction, the genre of visionaries, is a subtle but powerful tool to raise awareness about the realities of climate change in Africa. With its prophecies about the future, it holds the potential to inspire innovation and to compel climate action in Africa and the rest of the world.
Hope is what pushes us to perform feats of mythic proportions, like Asha in Pumzi, in service of something greater than ourselves.
This is where science fiction can really make all the difference.
So, what pieces of science fiction have changed how you see the world? Both African and non-African recommendations are welcome!