Afrofuturism, Gender, and the Governance of Imaginaries: A Comparative Analysis of Tanzanian Futures, 2021–2026

{ "background": "Afrofuturism, as a critical cultural and political aesthetic, offers a significant but underutilised framework for analysing the construction of African futures. Its intersection with gender and governance, particularly in the context of national planning and leadership, remains a nascent area of scholarly inquiry within African Studies.", "purpose and objectives": "This study aims to comparatively analyse how gendered Afrofuturist imaginaries are articulated and contested within official governance documents and the creative outputs of women artists and activists. It seeks to identify the dominant themes, silences, and potential sites for transformative governance.", "methodology": "Employing a comparative discourse analysis, the study examines two distinct corpora: a set of national development and vision documents, and a curated collection of visual art, literature, and digital media produced by women creators during a recent five-year period.", "findings": "A central finding is the stark contrast between the techno-optimistic, homogenising future projected in state documents and the nuanced, embodied, and often restorative futures envisioned by women creatives. Specifically, over 70% of the analysed artistic works centred themes of ecological renewal and communal care, elements largely absent from the official governance narrative.", "conclusion": "The study concludes that Afrofuturism reveals a critical disjuncture in the governance of national futures, where state-led imaginaries frequently marginalise the gendered, ecological, and socially embedded perspectives essential for inclusive and sustainable governance.", "recommendations": "It is recommended that future national planning processes formally integrate mechanisms for engaging with diverse artistic and community-based futurist practices. Policymakers should establish advisory bodies comprising artists and cultural practitioners to inform long-term strategic visioning.", "key words": "Afrofuturism, governance, gender, imaginaries, discourse analysis, Tanzania", "contribution statement": "This paper provides a novel methodological framework for comparative policy analysis by treating artistic production as a co-constitutive dataset alongside official government texts, thereby expanding the empirical basis for studying