Overall Learning Objectives

• To introduce participants to diverse definitions of and approaches to anticipatory governance.
• To expose participants to key participatory futures tools and methods for envisioning and navigating towards sustainable and just futures.
• To provide participants with case studies of how anticipatory governance has been applied in different ways across a variety of contexts, with a focus on examples from Southern Africa.

Module 1: Introduction to Anticipatory Governance

Learning outcomes:

1. Understand what Anticipatory Governance is and why it is important for navigating change and uncertainty.
2. Understand the key features of Complex Adaptive Systems.
3. Recognise different approaches and principles of Anticipatory Governance.

Module 1 Content:

• Section 1.1 - What is Anticipatory Governance?
• Section 1.2 - Why Anticipatory Governance? Why now?
• Section 1.3 - Introduction to Complex Adaptive Systems
• Section 1.4 - Anticipatory Governance: Approaches and principles
• Section 1.5 - Anticipatory Governance: Concepts and Glossary
• Short assessment  - Multiple choice questions

Module 2: Exploring the emerging landscape of Anticipatory Governance

Learning outcomes:

1. Understand how Anticipatory Governance is different to traditional strategic foresight.
2. Recognise key tools and methods for Anticipation, using examples from Southern Africa.

Module 2 Content:

• Section 2.1 - How is Anticipatory Governance different to traditional strategic foresight?
• Section 2.2 - Tools and methods for Anticipation: Reflections from SADC
• Section 2.3 - How do you think Anticipatory Governance could be useful in Southern Africa?
• Section 2.4 - An overview of some key participatory futures tools and methods
• Section 2.5 - Case study: A playshop on the Futures of Governance in Africa
• Short assessment  - Multiple choice questions

Module 3: Anticipatory Governance: Capacities and approaches for action

Learning outcomes:

1. Understand the challenges and opportunities for Anticipatory Governance in Southern Africa.
2. Make recommendations for what is needed for Anticipatory Governance in the context of Southern Africa.

Module 3 Content:

• Section 3.1 - Case study: The availability of data and implications for decision-making
• Section 3.2 - Anticipatory Governance in SADC: Reducing disaster risk after COVID-19
• Section 3.3 - Capacities for Anticipatory Governance in Southern Africa
• Section 3.4 - Practical recommendations for action
• Section 3.5 - Collecting seeds of Anticipatory Governance
• Short assessment  - Multiple choice questions

Module 4: Resilience: Supporting Anticipatory Governance and decision-making

Learning outcomes:

1. Define what resilience is and identify principles of resilience.
2. Identify tools and approaches for fostering resilience and supporting decision-making.

Module 4 Content:

• Section 4.1 - Resilience as an Anticipatory Governance capacity
• Section 4.2 - Seven principles of resilience
• Section 4.3 - Seeds of a Good Anthropocene
• Section 4.4 - Tools and approaches to foster resilience and support decision-making
• Section 4.5 - Case study: Participatory approach for Anticipatory Governance in Southern Africa
• Short assessment  - Multiple choice questions

 

Meet the Course Facilitators

  Tanja Hichert

Tanja Hichert is an academically qualified and highly experienced futures and foresight practitioner who has maintained a link with academic Futures Studies in her career. She specialises in scenario planning, horizon scanning, strategic foresight, risk management, and facilitating strategic conversations that provide clarity and direction for organisations and institutions faced with complexity and uncertainty. Tanja has extensive experience in process design and applying futures / foresight to a vast range of issues in the public and private sector. She has a solid record of accomplishment in business strategy, plus considerable project management experience. Tanja is co-chair of the candidate UNESCO Chair in Complex Systems and Transformative African Futures at Stellenbosch University (due to be conferred late in 2021). Tanja teaches post-graduate students and serves on boards of Futures organisations. She has a passion for expanding and building the practical application of Future Studies on the African continent. Where opportunity allows, Tanja has a love for innovative and experimental approaches, and working at the intersection of complex issues.

   Dr Rika Preiser

Rika Preiser is a senior researcher at the Centre for Sustainability Transitions (CST) at Stellenbosch University. Rika’s research explores the conceptual development of complexity and how the study of the features and dynamics of Complex Adaptive Systems inform novel ways for thinking and anticipating more equitable social-ecological transformation processes toward resilient Anthropocene futures. Her current work explores how a relational theory of change could inform global change paradigms, discourses, and practices concerning people-biosphere relations. Rika is interested in Anthropocene challenges at the science-society and science-art interfaces and how artistic practices and interactive modes of engagement could stimulate and advance more positive responses to bringing about alternative social-ecological futures. Rika supervises students who are keen to experiment and employ Participatory Action Research methods as ways to engage with and shape social-ecological, real-world problems. She hopes that a reflective engagement with complexity will challenge us to recognize the normative call to re-imagine what it might mean to be human in the Anthropocene. Rika holds Masters degrees in Journalism (2004) and Social Anthropology (2008). In 2012 she completed her PhD in the Department of Philosophy entitled “The Problem of Complexity: Rediscovering the role of Critique” at Stellenbosch University. Rika teaches complex adaptive systems thinking to students from the fields of medicine, business management, sustainability studies and agricultural sciences.

  Prof Reinette (Oonsie) Biggs

Oonsie Biggs is the co-director of the Centre for Sustainability Transitions (CST) at Stellenbosch University and holds a DST/NRF South African Chair (SARChl) in Social-Ecological Systems and Resilience. She is an NRF A-rated researcher and holds a joint appointment in the CST at Stellenbosch University and the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University in Sweden. Oonsie co-chairs the science committee of the Program on Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS, https://pecs-science.org/), one of the core global research programs of Future Earth, and leads the affiliated Southern African Program on Ecosystem Change and Society (SAPECS), a network of researchers and practitioners working on social-ecological systems in the southern African region (see www.sapecs.org). Oonsie also serves on the Board of Directors for the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics in Sweden, and on the South African Global Change Science Committee which serves as an advisor to the country’s national research foundation. Her research aims to advance theory and understanding of complex social-ecological systems, specifically how to build resilience to deal with uncertainty, surprise and ongoing environmental and social change. Through her research, Oonsie aims to develop practical theory, methods and insights that can ultimately contribute to facilitating transitions to more sustainable futures in Southern Africa.

Dr Joy Waddell

Joy Waddell is a researcher at the Centre for Sustainability Transitions (CST) at Stellenbosch University and the Coordinator of the CST’s MPhil in Sustainable Development programme. With a background in human geography and disaster risk science, Joy is interested in applying inclusive and collaborative governance thinking to enhance the resilience of people and ecosystems, particularly in the global South. Joy’s research at the CST focuses on exploring resilience thinking in Southern Africa, the extent to which policies in the region are aligned with resilience thinking, and where some of the gaps and leverage points are for strengthening resilience in Southern Africa. Under the USAID Resilient Waters program, her work and students’ research aim to understand how collaborative governance can strengthen the resilience of communities to transboundary water resources in the face of climate change and uncertainty. Joy completed her MSc in Disasters, Adaptation, and Development at King’s College London in the United Kingdom and her PhD in Environmental and Geographical Science at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Her doctoral research explored flood risk in Cape Town’s informal settlements and the barriers and opportunities for a more inclusive disaster governance approach in contexts of deep informality and weak governance.

Meet the Guest Speakers

   Prof Fritz Nganje

Fritz Nganje is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Johannesburg. He is also Associate Editor of Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies and a former Southern Voices Network for Peacebuilding Scholar. His primary areas of research include the foreign relations of subnational governments, decentralized cooperation, human security in Africa, as well as South Africa’s foreign policy and diplomacy in Africa.

  Prof Anthoni van Nieuwkerk

Anthoni van Nieuwkerk holds an MA in political science from the University of Johannesburg and a PhD in international relations from Wits University, Johannesburg.  He has been research-active from the early 1990s and has pursued an academic career in post-graduate teaching, supervision, and policy analysis from 2000. Anthoni is based at the Wits School of Governance, where he participates in peace and security studies.  In 2015, the South African government appointed him to the South African Council on International Relations and in 2018, to the Presidential High-level Review Panel into Intelligence. Anthoni is a skilled institutional architect and experienced academic manager, facilitator and programme evaluator. He publishes widely on African foreign and security policy, has participated in several scenarios exercises, and has broad experience with advising policymakers and practitioners in the South African government, the Southern African Development Community  and the African Peer Review Mechanism. He coordinates a network of Southern African academics and practitioners, is a senior research associate at Good Governance Africa, and serves as editorial board member of several accredited journals.

  Prof Dewald van Niekerk

Dewald van Niekerk is Professor in Geography and the founder and head of the African Centre for Disaster Studies at North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, South Africa. Dewald is a South African B3 NRF rated researcher. He obtained his Ph.D. in 2005 and was promoted to full professor in 2012. He has authored and co-authored more than 100 publications which includes peer reviewed articles, books and chapters in books and international and national research reports. He has been project leader for local, national as well as international disaster risk reduction projects, and has undertaken disaster risk reduction research and consultancy in numerous countries world-wide. He is the programme leader for the Disaster Risk Sciences research group and the Ph.D. in Disaster Risk Sciences in the Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management. He is the founder and Editor in Chief of the accredited journal Jàmbá: Journal of Disaster Risk Studies. In 2012 he played a significant role in the establishment of the Southern Africa Society for Disaster Reduction. His research is motivated by a desire to reduce the possible impacts of natural hazards and unknowns like climate change on communities most at-risk. His interests include disaster risk governance, resilience building, complexity and complexity theory, communit-based disaster risk management, disaster risk assessment, building institutional capacities for disaster risk reduction, and transdisciplinary disaster risk reduction.

  Dr Geci Karuri-Sebina

Geci Karuri-Sebina is an urban scholar-practitioner based in Johannesburg working in the intersection between people, place and technological change. She is a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Witwatersrand where she is hosting the Civic Tech Innovation Network. She is also associated with the University of Cape Town’s African Centre for Cities, South African Cities Network, a learning network of the country’s metropolitan municipalities, and Singularity University’s Global Faculty. Geci’s work is mainly in Africa and the global south. She has a diverse background, spanning a range of foresight, policy, innovation and practice topics, and has worked extensively in R&D, government and civic organisations. She previously worked with South Africa’s Ministry of Finance (National Treasury), the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Advanced Policy Institute. She has also recently served on the South African Council of Planners (SACPLAN), the Johannesburg Development Agency (JDA) Board, and the national Ministerial Task Team on the Fourth Industrial Revolution. She currently serves as the Vice-Chair of AfricaLICS (the community of innovation scholars in Africa) and Regional Advisor of the Africa Innovation Summit.