27 January 2026 – Bayo Akomolafe, member of the Club of Rome, reflects on why familiar responses to today’s converging crises may no longer be sufficient. A philosopher, writer and Hubert Humphrey distinguished professor of American Studies at Macalester College, his work explores the limits of modern systems thinking, challenging dominant ideas of progress, solutions and leadership. Speaking with Club of Rome’s Communications Fellow Yvonne Wambua, he invites a deeper reconsideration of how we can respond beyond established conventional solutions.
What led you to find resonance with the Club of Rome, and what does this gathering of minds evoke in your journey?
I ran into a friend, Carlos Álvarez Pereira and he simply suggested the Club of Rome. That was it. Of course, I was already familiar with its history particularly The Limits to Growth, a publication from decades ago that continues to speak powerfully to our present moment.
What drew me, however, was not the institution’s reputation or the narratives surrounding it. My interest was in the possibility of joining a collective that is genuinely open to ‘beautiful conversations’ that do not consolidate mastery but rather expose us to the elements and make us vulnerable.
Especially now, when contemporary politics is faltering, the Club of Rome seemed to offer a space where difficult questions could be held without premature closure. A space attentive to incorporating artistic and cultural perspectives. That, for me, was the invitation.
The Club of Rome has long warned that conventional responses can deepen systemic crises. How might we begin to listen and respond differently today?
I often return to a question that troubles me deeply, “What if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis?” We tend to imagine problems and solutions as belonging to different worlds as though solutions are somehow innocent. However, it is entirely possible that problems and solutions emerge from the same logic.
We see this when forests are burned down to save them, or when beaches are cleaned only for the waste to be dumped back into the ocean. These responses make sense within a particular framework, yet they remain trapped inside it.
This is where my inquiry into what I call parapolitics comes in. Parapolitics is an attention to cracks and moments when systems contradict themselves. These moments reveal that systems are not as total as they appear. Responding differently, then, is about learning how to notice and lean into these cracks, where new meaning might emerge.
You speak of cosmologies as shaping how societies act. How do cosmologies influence political and ecological futures?
Cosmologies are the stories we tell about how the world works and they are also the stories that tell us who we are. They shape what is considered worthy of attention or care. Modern cosmologies, particularly those inherited through colonial modernity, tend to centralise the human as supreme: detached from ecology, positioned above material responsibility and insulated from consequence. This framing enables narratives of endless progress, narratives that the Club of Rome has long challenged.
My work attempts to disrupt these cosmologies by decentering the human and making space for a world that is intelligent, a world that moves and responds. In many ways, this resonates deeply with the spirit of The Limits to Growth, which already gestured toward the impossibility of human exceptionalism on a finite planet.
You argue that colonisation today operates beyond politics and history. What does this mean in practice?
Colonisation is no longer only a historical or political event. It now operates at the level of habit and thought. It becomes embedded in how we perceive the world and what we believe is possible.
We become trapped in ways of thinking and adapting. Take the discourse of development on the African continent which is often presented as incontestable, as though it were the only viable horizon for social and ecological life. This narrowing of imagination is itself a form of colonisation.
Globalisation intensifies this by standardising how the world is interpreted and governed. In this sense, colonisation is not merely something that happened; it is something that continues to happen through the habits we inherit and reproduce.
Storytelling plays a central role in your work. Why is it essential for systemic transformation?
I believe we have reached the limits of our dominant language. We have become adept at repeating words like impact, growth, sustainability that are full of meaning, yet seldom ever motivating ‘change’.
Storytelling, especially in a poetic sense, interrupts this stagnation. Poetry, as I understand it, disappoints language as it exceeds what language claims it can do. It creates openings for feeling and thinking differently. For institutions like the Club of Rome, storytelling offers a way to engage transformation as a reorientation of how reality itself is encountered.
You resist conventional ideas of “impact” and “scaling up.” What does transformation look like from your perspective?
I struggle with the phrase “a real difference.” It often assumes that we simply need to improve the efficiency of the same machine. Transformation, to me, is an infection that spreads quietly and unpredictably. It does not announce itself as success but silently moves through cracks and not necessarily through traditional institutions.
This does not reject action or organisation. It asks us to reconsider what kind of action is possible in a world already shaped by systemic exhaustion.
How do you hope to contribute to the Club of Rome, and where do you see its greatest responsibility today?
The Club of Rome holds potential for a different understanding of leadership. A shift from leadership as management to leadership as a generative event. Leadership, in this sense, is not owned or mastered. It emerges between conditions, relationships and moments.
We are living through a convergence of crises including climate breakdown, AI insurgencies, declining trust in democratic institutions and rising authoritarianism. These are not problems that can be addressed through progressive refinement. They signal ontological rupture.
My hope is to remain in conversation with the Club of Rome, its members and leadership to explore how we can hold space for this kind of leadership: one that does not rush to solutions but dares to rethink the very frameworks through which solutions are imagined.
