Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum Guest Editorial Envisioning African futures: Perspectives from economic geography Stefan Ouma a, ⁎ , Alex Hughes b , James T. Murphy c , Maggie Opondo d a Department of Geography, University of Bayreuth, Germany b School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, University of Newcastle, UK c Department of Geography, Clark University, USA d Institute for Climate Change and Adaptation, University of Nairobi, Kenya ARTICLEINFO Keywords: Futures Development Economic geography Africa Decoloniality Southern theory ABSTRACT The commentaries and reviews in the section that follow take up the recently popularized notion of 'African futures' in order to explore the geographies, modes, potentialities, politics, and practices of epistemic, socio- economic, political and socio-ecological transformations that may be complementary or antagonistic to the global capitalist project. ‘Africa’ has been heralded lately as the last frontier of global ca- pitalism by businesses, international organizations, governments and scholarsinsideandoutsidethecontinent;andrecently,wewereableto hold two panel sessions that vividly discussed the evolving relationship between the African continent’s future and that of global capitalism. 1 Highlightsoftheseinterventionsarecapturedinthecriticaldebateand review pieces that follow to underline not just this connection, but to also explore the possibility whether, as Mbembe (2016) notes, the so- cial, economic and ecological future of (global) capitalism is being shaped by movements and events taking place on the continent right now. The views and interventions presented here remind us that the future of Africa and that of globalized capitalism (and its potential al- ternatives)areintertwinedincomplexways–astheyhavealwaysbeen historically via colonialism. These commentaries and reviews take up the recently popularized notion of ‘African futures’ in order to explore the geographies, modes, potentialities, politics, and practices of epistemic, socio-economic, po- liticalandsocio-ecologicaltransformationsthatmaybecomplementary or antagonistic to the global capitalist project (e.g., Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2015, Sarr, 2016). A range of critical questions come to the fore: What conceptualizations of African futures exist across the whole range of economic, technological, social and ecological fields that may be of interest to economic geographers and other social and natural scien- tists?Whosefuturesarebeingconsideredandwhoseinterestsarebeing served? What kinds of knowledges, narratives and framings do we mobilize to engage with the question of potential pathways into the future? The following contributions strive to bring these questions of African futures into the mainstream of economic geography. In the first of three commentaries, Julie Silva draws on the case of the illegal trade in rhino horns in Mozambique to illuminate un- comfortable tensions between Western conservation objectives and as- pirations of economically-marginalized communities when a decolo- nizing agenda suggests valuing the latter. Mangasini Katundu’s contribution discusses the case of Tanzania to support a decolonization of higher education in ways that span research and curriculum content and delivery. Opportuna Kweka and Stefan Ouma in the third com- mentary value smallholder systems of agriculture for their capacity to tackle challenges such as climate change through indigenous agrarian forms rather than western-favoured industrialized farming. In the cri- tical reviews, Detlef Müller-Mahn first presents fresh perspectives on African development corridors by theorizing their diverse forms of fu- ture-making in ways that appreciate African agency. Finally, Pádraig Carmody takes the set of reviews back to questions of economic geo- graphy and the sub-discipline’s approach to African economic futures, arguing for more theorization of globalization based on African ex- periences of economy. Economic geographers have often dealt with gravitational shifts in the global economy that so far have largely by-passed the African continent as a place from which conceptual innovations might emerge. This remains troubling given that Africa is heralded as the last frontier https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.05.030 Received 27 May 2019; Accepted 31 May 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: stefan.ouma@uni-bayreuth.de (S. Ouma). 1 Thedoublepanelsession,titled“AfricanFutures,andtheFutureofGlobalCapitalism”,washeldattheGlobalConferenceonEconomicGeography(GCEG)heldin Cologne in July 2018. Geoforum xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0016-7185/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Stefan Ouma, et al., Geoforum, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.05.030