Foresight for a better African future: Lessons from six decades of practice

Motivation Being able to anticipate (foresight) and thus identify development pathways and make long‐term plans is crucial for the transformation of Africa. However, long‐term planning was abandoned as many African countries went into crisis, being mostly forced to adopt structural adjustment programmes in the 1980s. Although long‐term planning began to make a comeback in the 1990s, the resulting visions have tended to remain that— visions—not fully reflected in policy implementation. Purpose The article explores the many cycles of foresight in Africa to gain insight into how foresight can become an opportunity to generate new development options and strategies for Africa. Various examples of foresight in Africa are examined to tease out the imperatives for African policy‐makers to embed foresight into development management. Approach and Methods We review foresight in Africa, starting by mapping foresight exercises in the continent since independence. We identify three categories of foresight exercises: development partner‐led, government‐led, and civil society‐led. Given the involvement of the authors in some of the exercises, assessments are largely derived from personal communications, recollections, and reflections. Findings Four insights emerge. First, foresight exercises have had little impact on leaders and decision‐makers, in large part because they have not been intimately engaged in the exercises. Two, foresight narratives tend to be challenging, raising difficult issues that may require substantial and difficult reforms. Faced with everyday challenges of government, leaders have usually chosen to ignore and disbelieve foresight exercises. Three, foresight analysts have not been sufficiently empathetic to the highly constrained systems of public governance and the ministers and civil servants that operate them. Four, futures initiatives can present the factors that may shape the future as overwhelming; and thereby discounting and undervaluing individual and collective agency. Policy implications Exploring the future is not new in Africa. In traditional African societies, the need to explore the future has been recognized, as captured in proverbs and mythologies. The challenge facing African countries today is how to domesticate and democratize “modern” foresight so it becomes a way of life for decision‐makers and institutions.