Beschreibung:
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<jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Purpose</jats:title>
<jats:p>The purpose of this paper is to nurture reflections on the colonization of the future in the present with a particular focus on Africa. This paper aims at exploring how participatory research and particularly anticipatory action research can contribute to a decolonising process.</jats:p>
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<jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Design/methodology/approach</jats:title>
<jats:p>Considering the future as a public good, this paper develops a reflection on the colonization processes that can turn it into a club or a private good. This paper mobilizes the notions of participatory knowledge production and local action research as a way to decolonize the future and empower imagination. This paper revisits the tenets of participatory action research as a means to achieve this objective and discusses the main features of a non-colonial anticipatory action research in the context of African futures.</jats:p>
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<jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Findings</jats:title>
<jats:p>This paper highlights the challenges associated with connecting anticipatory endeavours focusing on action research, the creation of collective intelligence and co-design, with the intention of encouraging the decolonisation process. It includes design principles and anticipates a possible process of counter-decolonization.</jats:p>
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<jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Research limitations/implications</jats:title>
<jats:p>This is a conceptual paper, which does not provide field-tested evidence. Yet, the authors hope it serves as an input enabling to design methodologies that will prevent the colonisation of the future when engaging in future-oriented research activities in Africa and elsewhere.</jats:p>
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<jats:title content-type="abstract-subheading">Originality/value</jats:title>
<jats:p>This paper provides an integral approach to the colonisation of the future, as a renewed old question. This paper also connects this process with a reflection on the nature of what could be non-colonizing anticipatory action research.</jats:p>
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