Mosquitoes, mushrooms, magic: Africanfuturist SF for nature's futures

It is widely recognised that nature must be valued in ways that go beyond narrow and to economic valuations, and accommodates the interconnected social, cultural, aesthetic, and spiritual dimensions of nature. There is also now growing interest in futures that value nature in its own right, independent of the many benefits that nature provides to humans. How we imagine the future shapes what we value and how we make decisions in the present. The Nature Futures Framework (NFF) offers high-level guidance for imagining new nature futures that acknowledges the complex and interconnected values of nature. This article explores the potential for Africanfuturist science fiction to populate the naturefor-culture and nature-for-nature zones of the NFF construct. Africanfuturist science fiction has the potential to address gaps identified within the NFF, especially at the Nature as Culture and Nature for Nature nodes. These visions of the future can embody the priorities and the lived experience of their African authors. We explore a small sample of Africanfuturist texts to highlight both their diversity and to draw out some significant commonalities.