Authors:

Chris Muashekele (AAU), Kasper Rodil (AAU), Heike Winschiers-Theophilus (NUST), Christof Magoath (Donkerbos community)

Executive summary:

This paper presents the first instance and experience of futuring with a rural San community from the Kalahari desert in Donkerbos, Namibia. Over a series of sessions we explore divergent speculative design and design fiction methods to stimulate and invoke alternative green energy use cases. These alternatives are premised on the imagination of unorthodox green energy use, superseding interventionist energy use which is constantly propagated and mainstream. We showcase the application of speculative design and design fiction in challenging the dominant interventionist approach and singular temporal view, resulting in a dissentient dual temporality. As well as demonstrate its utility and inadequacies in transitioning an African rural indigenous community into the speculative, arguing for the appropriation and widening of futuring methods in an African context.