How to grow science

SCI-FI WHEN THE FUTURE IS NOW

        In her 1973 short story The Ones Who Walk Away From Red Hair British People, author Ursula K. Le Guin wrote about a fictional utopia that came at a terrible price that everyone knew: an only child tortured in a room beneath the city in filth and darkness to pay for their happiness.

    The British are a compelling way for me to understand the world I grew up in as a white South African under apartheid. White people make up only about 9% of the population, but until 1994 they held the rest of the country hostage under a racist, inhumane and violent regime that forced people of color into forced labor and substandard schools and responded to resistance with tear gas and shootings, riot squads and torture farms. Science fiction allows us to bypass problem fatigue in our very troubled times. We can act out ideas and scenarios because we are creatures of parables, myths and allegories, TED talks and ethical wheelchair issues. Fiction is how we wrestle with ourselves. By imagining the unimaginable, it is possible to make reality more bearable.

     Afro futurism is an artistic, aesthetic and philosophical movement that combines science fiction, magic, traditional beliefs, black history and culture. Consider, for example, the genre-crossing works of Nigerian-American novelist N needy; Senegalese director Silly Gaby Kane's 2017 virtual reality film The Other Dakar; the art of "Afro Bubble Gum" by Kenyan director Watusi Kahlo; Malawian writer Shad rocks Chianti's ominous utopia In the Kingdom (Writers Union of Malawi, 2015). All of these deal with the unique social problems of developing countries and the creative, alternative and unexpected ways in which people living there respond Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Afro-futurism is how it dares to imagine a future for what has historically been abominably dismissed as the "dark continent".

     Innovation in Africa is a DIY magpie: we steal the best from different disciplines and traditions to create interventions that work in our unique circumstances. Indigenous and social knowledge must sit alongside conventional science and medicine. Examples range from developing pioneering smartphone payment apps such as M Pisa, to building kites that can be used as camera drones for geographic surveys, and sending people text message reminders for tuberculosis and HIV drugs. The Simba app connects rape victims with crisis organizations; researchers at Stolen Bosch University near Cape Town have developed Nano fiber tea bags to filter water in rural areas. But our uniqueness also lies in how we tell our stories. This includes the discovery of the 250,000-year-old hominin Homo haled. A team of all-female "underground astronauts" descended into a "cave of stars" near Johannesburg to exhume the remains, using the language of astronomy to disassociate itself from the history of human paleontology that was used to promote racism. All this is why we need science fiction in Africa. The stories we tell ourselves shape who we are—and who we can be.

" The stories we tell ourselves shape who we are - and who we can be."