I watched "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" last weekend, in an actual movie theater — the first time I’ve seen anything on a big screen since the pandemic began. It was every bit as lush and beautiful as the first "Black Panther," and Angela Bassett, Lupita N’yongo and Letitia Wright were more luminous than ever. But I kept remembering one of the last conversations I had about Wakanda, with a group of African humanities scholars Steve and I met in Ethiopia when we were recording interviews for our "Ideas from Africa" series. At the time, "Black Panther" was still fresh in everybody’s minds. In the US, the Wakanda salute was trending as a symbol of Black solidarity and pride; in Africa, the film was still setting box office records up and down the continent. But at this conference, reactions to the mythical African kingdom of Wakanda were mixed. If Wakanda was such an advanced technological nation, people asked, why was it still a monarchy? Why was its economy based on something as colonialist as extracting minerals from the earth? Why did Wakanda’s music, culture and fashion draw from the entire African continent when it kept itself isolated and hidden? Above all — why did the filmmakers assume that an advanced Black nation would offer no help or aid or support to the struggling Black citizens of other African nations? They liked the movie — but as an imaginary African future, it just didn’t make sense.
Luckily, we’re living in a golden age of African science fiction and fantasy — stories rooted in African histories and cultures, drawing from African cosmologies and philosophies. It’s a great time to imagine better futures. Our show this week is a good place to start. I hope you enjoy it!
—Anne