When we speak of the future in Africa we often mean the next election or the next harvest or the next donor cycle and “in a present stretched too thin.” Yet the new Oxford University Press volume Essays on Longtermism Present Action for the Distant Future reminds us that the moral capacity and boundary stretch much farther beyond our own life times. Far beyond the limits of our need and going into the unknown of generations that are not born yet.
Long termism as discussed in this remarkable collection edited by Hilary Greaves, Jacob Barrett, and David Thorstad is the moral view that positively shaping the long term future should be one of humanitys highest priorities. It is a simple but revolutionary idea that what we do today the policies we craft the technologies we develop, the ecosystems we protect will ripple across millennia. The authors urge us to act not only as citizens of a nation or an era, but as ancestors of the future world.
Africas Long Future
For Africa this idea carries a lot of weight. Looking at our potential and where we could be I would say that we are a young continent full of potential but also fragile in its development. A good example is my country Kenya where the median age is barely twenty years. The decisions made by today’s leaders whether on education and energy or environmental conservation will shape the lives of billions yet to come.
Consider the Congo Basin rainforest which is the planets second largest after the Amazon. It stores vast amounts of carbon, regulates rainfall across central and eastern Africa, and sustains millions of species and communities. Yet each year deforestation nibbles away at its edges. To think long-term is to understand that every felled tree is not just lost shade today but stolen rainfall in a century’s time. In this sense longtermism is not abstract philosophy. It is a moral stance that insists we weigh the value of future generations as heavily as our own comfort.
Closer to home Karura Forest in Nairobi offers a smaller but equally vivid example. Once threatened by land grabbers, it was saved through public resistance and now thrives as a sanctuary for both wildlife and city dwellers. Had those activists given in to short-term greed, we would have lost more than trees we would have erased a legacy. Their courage embodied longtermist ethics before the term existed.
Lessons from “Essays on Longtermism”
The essays in this collection challenge us to apply such thinking more deliberately. In their opening chapter the authors argue that the moral value of our actions depends primarily on their long-term effects. Later essays talks on whether humanity can predict or control the distant future at all. For example David Rhys Bernard and Eva Vivalt explore the limits of forecasting a challenge especially familiar in Africa where uncertainty often governs everything from rainfall to policy out comes. Yet even they suggest that uncertainty is not an excuse for inaction it is a reason for wiser planning.
The volumes discussions of existential risk are also deeply relevant here. Joe Carlsmith’s essay on “Existential Risk from Power Seeking AI” may seem far removed from African realities yet we already see glimpses of it. a good example is algorithms determining crop prices and managing water distribution and even scanning for diseases. The moral test is not whether Africa will build AI systems but whether we will build them responsibly with foresight equity and humility.
The Moral Call
I think that in order for longtermism to really be seen in Africa we have to reject the cycle of short termism that has haunted our politics and development. It is to invest not just in roads but in resilient institutions and not just in GDP growth but in knowledge and ethics and environmental integrity. It is to ask whether our grand childrens grand children will thank us or curse us for what we did with our moment of influence.
The philosopher Toby Ord in his essay “Shaping Humanity’s Longterm Trajectory,” reminds us that civilizations can endure for millions of years if they learn to survive their own success. Africa, with its youth its resources, and its creativity, could become a longtermist continent one that thinks in centuries, not just election cycles. But that will require new habits of mind: curiosity instead of complacency, stewardship instead of consumption, and hope instead of haste.
Essays on Longtermism is not just an easy book it is a call for important change in our day to day life. It calls us to become custodians of time to see the future not as a distant abstraction but as a moral inheritance. For Kenya and the wider African continent in generadl the message is urgent: our actions today are planting the moral and material foundations of the world to come.