Africa Phambili. Africa Forward.

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Africa Phambili. Africa Forward.

Africa Phambili is an anthology of speculative stories imagining hopeful futures for the African continent. Set across diverse African landscapes and futures, the stories explore what it might take to build a more just, regenerative and sustainable world, while confronting the legacies of colonialism, resource extraction, inequality, ecological crisis and political power.

Written by African authors and inspired by conversations among scholars, artists, activists and innovators from across the continent and its diaspora, these stories offer more than visions of utopia, they ask us to imagine a future shaped by African voices, values and agency, and to consider what we are willing to change to get there.

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One anthology. Five Incredible stories.

Artwork

All Artwork by Anja and Dan.

Stories within Africa Phambili.

Agapantha

— Lauren Beukes
In a near-future Morocco, an AI interface within the royal palace observes the tensions between technological progress, political power and the people it is meant to serve. As the possibility of transformation emerges, the story explores Africa’s place in the AI revolution and asks what might happen when those in power truly listen to their people.

Sankofa

— Muthi Nhlema
A powerful story of struggle, connection and resilience, “Sankofa” confronts the lasting impacts of colonialism, resource extraction and corrupt governance. Through a deeply personal journey, it asks what must be left behind and what we must be willing to change to create a different future for Africa.

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Black Yam

— Chinelo Onwualu
When a team of researchers travels to a village in Nigeria, they discover that the limits of scientific knowledge may not be as fixed as they thought. “Black Yam” explores the power of traditional knowledge, food and cultural practices, inviting us to reconsider what we value as knowledge and how the choices we make shape our futures.

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In The Realm Of Mangroves

— Mame Bougouma Diene

Set in the mangrove landscapes of West Africa, this haunting and surreal story blurs the boundaries between humans, spirits and nature. As ecological collapse reshapes society, it explores memory, sacrifice, power and renewal, and the possibility of finding new ways to live with the more-than-human world.

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When Impala Cry

— Bwanga Kapumpa
In a future Western Zambia, detective Mubita Nyambe is tasked with solving a mysterious death during the Kuomboka Ceremony. Blending mystery with Indigenous spirituality, animal agency and the forces of nature, the story offers a compelling vision of how Barotse values and relationships with the natural world might shape a different future.

Reviews

I believe in the power of stories. They help us understand who we are and where we’ve come from. When storytelling combines with imagination something amazing starts to happen: we start to explore a different future. Africa Phambili does exactly that. The stories invite us to imagine an Africa refreshingly defined by the authors themselves. They remind us that every transformation begins as an act of imagination. Before we can build a different future in Africa, we must first imagine it and then believe it is possible. That is the enduring power of storytelling – and the hope that is in the pages of this anthology. The writers have done the work, now all we have to do is read it to believe it.

- MOKY MAKURA

Africa is moving to the center of humanity’s future, and its potential for providing a good life for all its living inhabitants, including its wildlife, is immense. What’s needed in this moment of exciting possibilities are the stories that tell these positive futures in ways that inspire us and orient our activities in the present to make them come to pass. That’s what the stories in this book do. As a utopian science fiction writer, author of The Ministry for the Future, I can testify that there is a great hunger for these stories, and a great pleasure in reading them. Try these and see!

- KIM STANLEY ROBINSON

We are living through times of great change. Hard realities are confronting. Yet huge potential is also readily available if we can just open our hearts and minds. Through the art and craft of these stories, readers are encouraged to take a step into the unknown, living other lives and exploring possible futures that hold hope. The invitation rises from the page to inspire us towards acting towards a future that aligns our needs with those of our wild and wonderful planet Earth.

- GILL EINHORN

Who gets to decide what the future looks like? The answer is we all do. It is in negotiation with everyone that we can first imagine the future then, ultimately, seek to make it real. This is why these stories are important. It will be in our collective imaginations that the future that seemed impossible suddenly seems inevitable. This anthology contributes to that collective imagination.

- CHARLES EBIKEME

The Writers and Artist

Bwanga Kapumpa
Writer

Bwanga Kapumpa is a fiction and creative nonfiction writer. His short stories have been published by the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Afritondo Short Story Prize, and New Contrast, among others, and he has been shortlisted twice for the Miles Morland Foundation scholarship. Bwanga also works as a conceptual artist, and his installations have been shown in Livingstone, Zambia, the 13th Berlin Biennale in Germany and the 10th Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa, India. Bwanga is currently pursuing a Masters in Creative Writing with the University of Cape Town.

Chinelo Onwualu
Writer

Chinelo Onwualu is a Nigerian writer, editor, and journalist living in Toronto. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She’s the co-host of Griots and Galaxies, a podcast about African Speculative fiction and the people who write it. She’s also co-founder of Omenana, a magazine of African Speculative Fiction. She was chief spokesperson for the African Speculative Fiction Society. And she was a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, which she attended as the recipient of the Octavia E. Butler Scholarship. Her short stories have been featured in Slate.com, Uncanny, Strange Horizons, The Kalahari Review and Brittle Paper magazines, and several award-winning anthologies. She’s been nominated for the Locus Award, the Ignyte Community Award, the British Science Fiction Award, the Nommo Award for African Speculative Fiction, and the Short Story Day Africa Award.

Lauren Beukes
Writer

Lauren Beukes is an award-winning South African novelist and screenwriter, now based in London. She’s the author of six novels, including The Shining Girls, now a major AppleTV show and Zoo City which won the Arthur C Clarke Award. Her books have been translated into 26 languages and won international literary prizes. She’s a former journalist who worked in kids TV for five years, as showrunner on South Africa’s first half hour animated TV show, Pax Afrika. She directed an award-winning documentary, Glitterboys & Ganglands, and has given talks around the world on the interesections of culture, tech, politics and storytelling. She’s a champion of African creativity o the international stage, and has raised over a million Rand for charity in fundraisers inspired by her books.

Her story, Agapantha, was inspired by protests in Essouira in 2025 and she’s grateful to the Moroccan and Egyptian activists and authenticity readers who took the time to read multiple drafts, make invaluable suggestions and check the Darija used in the story.

Muthi Nhlema
Writer

Muthi Nhlema is a Malawian writer who resisted the speculative fiction label for years, lost the argument, and now wears it with a ridiculous grin. His work spans novellas and short fiction exploring alternate African futures and histories.

His first novella, Ta O’Reva, imagining Nelson Mandela’s return to a post-apocalyptic South Africa, won third prize in the 2015 International Freeditorial Long-Short Story Competition. The novella was shortlisted for Best Novella at the 2017 Nommo Awards.

His short story One Wit’ This Place opened the anthology Imagine Africa 500 and was named among the Top Ten African Speculative Fiction stories of 2016. His 2024 novelette Hiraeth, from the eco-fiction anthology Mombera Rising, was longlisted for the BSFA Awards and named among the Ten Best African Science Fiction stories. A recent detour into cultural satire, Piss Corpse, opened the ZamaShort series and made Afrocritik’s 50 Remarkable African Short Stories of 2025. In 2021, he was selected for the prestigious International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, the fifth Malawian to join since 1967.

He lives with his wife, whose reasons for marrying him remain a mystery, and their 13-year-old son, who continues his relentless campaign to get Muthi interested in anime.

Mame Bougouma Diene
Writer

Mame Bougouma Diene is a Franco–Senegalese American humanitarian based in Dakar, the francophone spokesperson for the African Speculative Fiction Society (http://www.africansfs.com/), once and future French language editor for Omenana Magazine, and a former columnist at Strange Horizons. You can find his fiction and nonfiction work in Omenana, Galaxies SF, Edilivres, Fiyah! Truancy Magazine, EscapePod, Mythaxis, Apex Magazine, Interzone and TorDotCom; and in anthologies such as AfroSFv2 & V3 (Storytime), Myriad Lands (Guardbridge Books), You Left Your Biscuit Behind (Fox Spirit Books), This Book Ain’t Nuttin to Fuck Wit (Clash Media), Africanfuturism (Brittle Paper), Dominion (Aurelia Leo), Meteotopia (Future Fiction/Co-Futures in English and Italian), Bridging Worlds (Jembefola Press) and Africa Risen (TorDotCom). His novelette The Satellite Charmer is translated in Italian by Moscabianca Edizioni, his novelette Ogotemmeli’s Song is translated in Bangla by Joydhak Prakashan and his short story Leki Leki is currently under translation in Lule Saami. He was nominated for several Nommo Awards, and his debut collection “Dark Moons Rising on a Starless Night” (Clash Books) was nominated for the 2019 Splatterpunk Award. His short story “A Soul of Small Places” co-authored with his spouse Woppa Diallo, won the 2023 Caine Prize for African Writing.

Editors and Artists

Helen Moffett
Editor

Helen Moffett is a freelance editor, author, academic, poet (her second collection, Prunings, was the joint winner of the 2017 SALA prize), feminist and environmental activist, scholar and teacher. She’s worked as an academic (UCT’s English Dept and African Gender Institute, and at several universities abroad) and a publisher (OUPSA), but also as a freelance editor and writing consultant for much of the past 30 years, She specialises in development editing, and her clients include academic, publishing and non-profit institutions. In 2019, she was named one of the African continent’s top ten literary editors/curators. Among the +-25 books she’s authored, co-authored or collated, two are guides on environmental care and she’s been the subject of a German documentary film as a “water warrior”. https://www.helenmoffett.com.

Laura Pereira
Editor

Professor of Sustainability Transformations and Futures at the University of the Witwatersrand and the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

Amy Chen
Editor

Project Coordinator for the Future Ecosystems For Africa project based at Wits University.

Mulako Kabisa
Editor

Postdoctoral Research Fellow on transformation pathways and bottom-up nature futures at Wits University.

Sènankpon Tcheton
Editor

A PhD Candidate in Sustainability and Transformative Change, specializing in Indigenous and Local Knowledge and marine and coastal environments. He is affiliated with the Global Change Institute of the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.

Anja “Nanna” Venter and Danielle Hitchcock
Artists

Anja “Nanna” Venter and Danielle Hitchcock are sisters from another life, who occasionally collaborate on illustrations. They both live in Cape Town with their respective cats and dog.

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