What might the world look like if Pan African solidarity had guided the design of today’s technologies? Pan-Africanism was never simply a political movement—it was a method of imagination and design: a way through which people of African descent across the world reimagined their relationships, technologies, and futures. Likewise, Afrofuturism transforms fiction, art, and technology into spaces for envisioning alternative worlds of care, freedom, and solidarity. For example, we will explore how people of African descent across the globe reimagined their identities, cultural relationships, technologies, and futures.

This IAP activity invites MIT students to explore Pan-Africanism and Afrofuturism as design frameworks for creativity and speculative imagination. Participants will experiment with storytelling, digital tools, and design thinking to develop short, conceptual projects, prototypes, or visual ideas that fuse historical imagination with future-oriented design. How are oral traditions, folklore, poetry, and African cosmologies portrayed in artistic Afro-futurist expressions? How can these systems of knowledge be reimagined, say, in game design, fashion, screenplays, and other creative industries?

No prior experience required—just curiosity and openness to thinking across art, science, technology, and culture.

Lead by Odinaka Kingsley Eze, HASTS MIT and Sheila Bombaar, UT Austin

January 14-16, 10am-11am.

Please email Odinaka Kingsley Eze for more information and to sign up, akaeze@mit.edu. Space is limited.