Short Abstract

This panel discusses the plurality and controversies of imagined futures (e.g. “the Africa we want”) expressed in national plans, infrastructure projects, public debates, and local practices of future-making.

Long Abstract

This panel uses the metaphor of a kaleidoscope to emphasise the plurality of visions, models and expectations concerning African futures. Unlike a prism, a kaleidoscope not only visualises multispectral representations, but focuses also on the dynamism and transient nature of constantly changing forms. In this sense, the panel invites contributions that demonstrate how desirable futures are imagined, promoted and contested, and how some of these visions unfold while others are silenced.

Building upon concepts such as future-making (Appadurai 2013), imagined futures (Beckert 2016), and socio-technical imaginaries (Jasanoff 2015), the panel explores their application in African contexts (Müller-Mahn & Bollig 2026). The kaleidoscope metaphor extends these approaches by drawing attention to how such imaginaries shift, fragment, and recombine over time, rather than settling into a single, stable vision.

Contributions may focus on issues such as land and water governance, infrastructure building, agricultural or urban development, and other fields that can be approached through the lens of kaleidoscopic futures. The panel takes an explicitly interdisciplinary approach, bringing together perspectives from geography, history, political ecology/economy, and development studies. Contributions should address at least one of the following questions:

In which ways and under which conditions have past visions of desirable futures changed over time, and how were they brought forward or silenced?

How do the “hard facts” of climate change and resource availability influence future possibilities?

Which actors and structures dominate future-making?

Which capacities do people have to shape their own future, or to resist others?

How are diverse (and alternative) futures represented?

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