Jameel Observatiory researcher Tahira Mohamed contributed to a book chapter exploring the politics of anticipation. Published in a book on ‘African Futures in the Making’, it explores how uncertain futures are framed and negotiated through a range of technical and political practices – in pastoral areas of southern Ethiopia and northern Kenya.
Droughts, floods, locust plagues, and epidemic diseases have all affected pastoralists in East Africa’s rangelands in the past few years. How can such uncertain events, each with major consequences for pastoral livelihoods, be confronted? How are contrasting futures anticipated? What different assumptions, techniques, and practices are deployed to respond to such uncertainties?
The authors explore two contrasting approaches to addressing uncertain futures, each with very different politics associated with them.
The first is a liberal, individual, market- based approach, which relies on scientific prediction forecasting, early warning, early action responses, and insurance to offset defined risks. This sees futures as controllable, predictable, and calculable through technical intervention. It is associated with the management of risk, whereby futures are assumed to be predictable and outcomes controllable.
The second is a more collective, redistributive approach, rooted in networks and relationships, and drawing on local knowledges and experiences of volatility and variability. It sees futures linked to current practices, embedded in social relations and not simply controllable through external means. This approach takes uncertainty seriously – where futures are indeterminate and outcomes are unknown – and relies on living with and from variability in a turbulent world. This perspective in turn suggests a more ‘caring’, less controlling politics.
While not mutually exclusive, these two perspectives do highlight very different understandings of risk and uncertainty and so a different politics of anticipation.
This, the authors argue, has major consequences for the way development support, including via insurance systems, is viewed.
More:
Download the chapter: Scoones, I., Mohamed, T.S., and Taye, M. 2026. The politics of anticipation in East Africa’s rangelands. IN: Müller-Mahn, D. and Bollig, M. African futures in the making. Abingdon, UK: James Currey: 272-295
Read the book: Müller-Mahn, D. and Bollig, M. African futures in the making. Abingdon, UK: James Currey.