What if Covid-19 was a democratization trigger: the democratization of shocks? Thinking back to conversations on postnormal times, we are encouraged to think of uncertainty as our only certainty, shifting the frame from risk assessment to adaptation to complexity. This requires a toolkit that integrates broader anticipatory thinking, in one word, Futures Literacy as theorized by Riel Miller (2015, 2018), but also humility in our understanding of time, agency, learning and our role as futurists/anticipation specialists. On that note, African apprehensions of uncertainty provide an interesting reading of our times.

April 9, 2020