A regenerative design and futures practice
Shaping
Africa’s futures.
We work with people, communities, businesses, and institutions to uncover potential, imagine desirable futures for Africa, and design the systems, enterprises, and capabilities that can bring them into being.
01 / Our belief
The future
is not fixed.
Africa’s futures can be actively imagined, designed and built. People and communities should have the freedom, imagination and capability to shape futures of their own.
Our ambition is to expand Africa’s capacity to imagine and build regenerative futures on its own terms. Regeneration strengthens the ability of people, communities and living systems to thrive and renew over time.
What guides the studio
Research and participation
Understand life today.
Shape what comes next.
We begin with people and place: how people live, what they need and value, what they aspire to, and the knowledge and capabilities already present.
Design research and human-centred design connect these realities with the work of imagining and building alternatives. People help shape the questions, develop ideas and test how those ideas work in practice.
Together with strategic foresight, futures thinking, systems thinking and regenerative design, this approach connects present needs with future possibilities.
Research within the Refuture MethodFrom problems to potential
What could
this place become?
Every place holds knowledge, relationships, creativity and living systems from which different futures can emerge.
We investigate present needs and constraints alongside aspirations, local knowledge and existing capabilities. With the people who know and inhabit the place, we explore what they want to make possible and which changes could help that possibility take shape.
Governments, development partners, funders and businesses can commission this work through strategy, design, transition support and capability programmes.
02 / What you can commission
Four ways to
move the work forward.
Foresight and futures strategy
Imagine and choose a desirable direction.
Horizon scans, scenarios, shared visions and strategy stress tests; desirable directions and choices for action.Systems and regenerative design
Design around the potential of a system.
Design research, co-design, system maps, models and prototypes; enterprise scopes can include demand, pricing, costs and routes to market.Transition strategy and implementation support
Turn a future ambition into action.
Backcasting, transition roadmaps, pilots and implementation support; operating responsibilities, resources, adoption and review points.Futures and systems capability
Build the capability to imagine, make and renew.
Applied programmes and coaching for people, communities, businesses and teams; tools to investigate, imagine, co-design, test and steward alternatives.Designing what is possible
Build regenerative
alternatives.
We work with people, communities, businesses and institutions to turn desirable futures into practical alternatives, from enterprises and services to programmes and institutional models.
Enterprise briefs connect purpose and potential with customer demand, pricing, costs, operating models, ownership, governance and financing assumptions.
We also address the relationships, skills, institutions and resources that help these alternatives take root and evolve. The aim is to strengthen the capacity of people, places and living systems to thrive over time.
For businesses and funders, this can mean testing demand, designing a route to market or deciding what evidence a pilot must produce before further commitment.
Enterprise and funder briefs03 / How we work
Imagine what is possible.
Design how to realise it.
Design research and human-centred design ground the work in lived realities. Strategic foresight, futures thinking, systems thinking and regenerative design connect that understanding with practical alternatives and the capability to keep creating.
- 01
Ground
Research needs and context.
- 02
Imagine
Explore future options.
- 03
Experiment
Test a prototype with people.
- 04
Build
Agree how it will work.
- 05
Steward
Learn from use and adapt.
Research and feedback continue across every move. Return as learning requires.
Equip and Mobilise throughout. We develop capability and organise the people, commitment and resources needed to act. Evidence can reopen any move.
Explore the approachOur futures areas
Six connected areas.
Work rooted in place.
Six connected areas of African futures. Each brief is grounded in a defined place, current realities and the knowledge of people involved.
Health Futures
Learning, technology and agencyEducation & Digital Futures
Work, income and economic participationLivelihoods Futures
Power, movement and connected placesEnergy & Mobility Futures
Nourishment, land and living systemsFood Futures
Places, belonging and collective lifeCities & Societies Futures
Across the six areas
Business Futures
Across all six areas, we explore how enterprises can adapt to change, create and share value, and build viable regenerative business models.
Explore business futures and enterprise designEach engagement draws on relevant sector expertise, local knowledge and confirmed delivery capacity.
05 / A brief made concrete
What could a regenerative
food system enable?
An illustrative brief shows how future possibilities can become a system inquiry, an enterprise or service concept, and a transition pathway.
Explore Food System FuturesFood System
Futures
Begin with a brief
What would you like to make possible?
Bring a future you want to shape, a system you want to redesign or an enterprise decision you want to test.
Learning through practice
Africa Futures
Fellowship.
Build capability and contribute to African futures knowledge through six months of research, foresight and regenerative design. Explore Food Futures or Health & Wellbeing Futures, then develop a futures research or design contribution.
Approximately 15 hours a week. Programme in preparation; register for dates, fee and the application announcement.
Explore the fellowship