GESDA Board Member Mamokgethi Phakeng addresses the 2023 Summit (©GESDA/von Loebell)

Beyond the Think Tank: Engaging Citizens to Spur Actions and Debates

As the advances covered in the GESDA Science Breakthrough Radar® reshape our world, the Citizens Forum brings a sharper focus on ways of creatively engaging more citizens, particularly through the spread of youth anticipation in Africa.

By John Heilprin

November 1, 2023

Efforts to anticipate and spread the benefits of breakthrough advances to all of humanity turn on engagement, not only with scientists and diplomats but also with citizens and particularly youth who are our future.

To aid those efforts, one of GESDA’s main communities – the Citizens Forum – is breaking down some of the barriers to participation.

On the sidelines of the 2023 GESDA Summit at CERN’s new Science Gateway center, GESDA Board Member Mamokgethi Phakeng enthused about the Citizens Forum she leads to include the voices of civil society. 

Phakeng, a mathematics education professor and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town, launched GESDA’s Youth and Anticipation Initiative last year to champion rising young scientific and academic leaders.

It’s a mission that dovetails with the latest edition of the GESDA Science Breakthrough Radar®, which not only analyzes how dozens of emerging science and technology topics may shape the future of philosophy, geopolitics, and science, but moves beyond science and research to take the pulse of society and offer tools for tapping this anticipatory knowledge.

“The Radar looks at how citizens are engaging,” she said. “What is it that they know about the science and technology advancements that are currently taking place? And so, what are the debates out there and what are they doing about it?”

She points out that young people on the African continent are the majority. Africa has the youngest and fastest-growing of any continent, a trend that will result in 1-in-4 people on the planet being African by 2050.

“If we don’t engage them, really I think we are disadvantaging ourselves and the world,” Phakeng said in an interview. “It will help us with ensuring political stability. It will help with increasing trust not just in science but in scientists.”

The summits have been gaining fresh perspective from young people in the GESDA Youth Cohort, an extension of the Radar’s focus on engaging people and its analysis of mainstream and social media to assess public opinion, sentiment and actions related to dozens of emerging topics.

Phakeng also has a huge network and social media following, and she understands that young people’s trust often depends on who is doing the talking.

“We talk about the lack of trust in science,” she said, “and sometimes I feel it’s not just a lack of trust in science, it’s a lack of trust in the scientist, as in: Depending on who tells me what, then I will believe it.”

Young people inspired to use science and diplomacy for the SDGs 

GESDA’s Youth and Anticipation Initiative, hosted by Phakeng, gets African youth involved with using the Radar, which also consolidates information from the sections on trends, actions and debates to identify opportunities for multilateral action. 

Phakeng emphasizes that the Radar’s use of AI to take the “pulse of society” through its analysis of 10 million social media posts and 1.3 million mainstream media articles from around the world help to visualize how sentiment and action around each topic is taking shape and changing, providing insights into society’s interests and priorities for the future.

At the opening plenary of the 3rd annual GESDA Summit organized by GESDA in October, Phakeng emphasized that science and technology are advancing at an exponential rate, but science and technology are not happening in a vaccum.

“The advances that we cover in the Radar are reshaping or will reshape how we see ourselves as human beings, the way we interact with each other, and our relation to the environment,” she told summit participants.

“And that means their applications, their potential and implications need to be discussed broadly – not only with the scientists who are able to come to the summit,” she said, “but with people who don’t even know that the summit is happening, including people in developing countries who are often left out from the conversations.”

How to put emerging science and technology in the service of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 – a top goal for GESDA – was much on the minds of participants who came to Geneva for the summit. That was fitting.

“Our first priority is the Sustainable Development Goals,” GESDA Chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe told a press conference, where he described the creation of the Open Quantum Institute in Geneva as “a real milestone in the young history of GESDA” because it meant stepping beyond the think tank into the realm of a do tank. Another well-advanced GESDA initiative is the launch of a Global Curriculum for Science and Diplomacy.

The reason the SDGs were chosen as GESDA’s guiding light, Brabeck-Letmathe explained, is that they alone have the imprimatur of global “political legitimacy” due to their approval by the 193-nation U.N. General Assembly in 2015.

Climate change’s effects on water availability – a primary issue throughout the SDGs – is an overriding concern for Tlhokomelo Mogotsi, a water resources engineer in South Africa for Johannesburg Water who also works with Danish and U.N. diplomats and traveled to Geneva through the GESDA Youth and Anticipation Initiative.

“The United Nations estimated that around 700 million Africans will be displaced by 2030 if nothing is changed at this point to water availability. As we speak right now, a third of all Africans are affected by water scarcity,” he said in an interview.

“So, tools like artificial intelligence and flood or drought prediction models can augment our infrastructure rollout programs so we don’t have white elephant infrastructure projects, which we have quite a lot of around Africa.”

For Kalonji Abondance Tshisekedi, a Ph.D. student in molecular biology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, a primary issue is the devastating impact of diseases like Ebola, cholera and malaria that he saw first-hand growing up in Kinshasa.

He is using his training and research in microbial community interactions to try to improve public health and well-being, and sees a need for more scientists to also gauge broader societal patterns.

“This has been a life-changing opportunity for me,” he said of his involvement with GESDA through the Youth and Anticipation Initiative, a competition to involve more African youth on the use of the Radar and to bring them to the annual GESDA summits in Geneva.

“Keeping the SDGs in mind and all the problems that Africa is facing, and also writing that idea proposal for this competition,” he said, “made me aware that I actually have in front of me certain skills and tools that could contribute to the future of our continent.”

L to R: Kalonji Abondance Tshisekedi, Mariam Ezz El-Arab and Tlhokomelo Mogotsi (©GESDA/von Loebell)

Where the science and diplomacy can take us

Citizen and particularly youth engagement has been a priority at GESDA for several years, informing discussions at all three annual GESDA Summits and adding to the insights of hundreds of scientists globally contributing to the forward-looking Science Breakthrough Radar.

The findings in the 2023 Science Breakthrough Radar®

Based on the Radar, here’s where we stand in several important areas:

4.1 – 4.4 Science & Diplomacy

Two decades of academic research into quantum computing brought significant recent investments in the field from It is now almost impossible to separate diplomacy from the influence of science and technology. Computational modeling, analysis and artificial intelligence are set to play important roles in international relations, especially when it comes to interactions between groups of people. Radar, page 176.

4.2.3 Science diplomacy and emerging economies

Science diplomacy has long played a part in maintaining good relations between economic world powers, and significant collaborations have involved exclusively emerging economies. The value of such endeavors in establishing credentials for global engagement is clear, for example, from South Africa’s success with the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), a radio telescope project. Another important dimension is the generational shift, where issues such as social justice are becoming increasingly important to proponents of science diplomacy. Radar, page 188.

Anticipation in a nutshell

5-year horizon: Emerging economies invest in science diplomacy training
10-year horizon: Trained science diplomats are spread through relevant organizations
25-year horizon: More large-scale science projects are established

4.3.4 Participatory futures and futures literacy

More communities are being encouraged to understand how to think about the future and engage with participatory future activity. This is spread futures literacy, which UNESCO defines as an essential, universally accessible competency which allows people to better understand how they can anticipate the future and plan accordingly. Research continues into how the human mind envisages the future and how that might be duplicated or augmented with machine intelligence and immersive technologies. Radar, page 195.

Anticipation in a nutshell

5-year horizon: Citizens gain futures literacy
10-year horizon: Participatory futures activities become routine
25-year horizon: Constitutions mandate participatory futures activity

4.4 Democracy-affirming technologies

The Democracy Index, as measured by the Economist Intelligence Unit since 2006, shows that for 2021 some 45.7 percent live in a democracy, a significant drop from the 49.4 percent just a year earlier. This is one, but by no means the only indication that democracy is in decline. Digital technology is one factor playing an increasingly important role in the processes of democracy, and can be used to enhance or diminish it. Ways to counter and identify misinformation is part of a broader debate that looks at how information can and should be moderated. Radar, page 196.

5.1 Computational social science

The social science that explores the relationships among individuals within societies and the forces that influence them has led to more meaningful datasets and models that give us a better understanding of a wide range of phenomena ranging from social inequality to the spread of diseases to pedestrian and traffic flows. Radar, page 214.

Anticipation in a nutshell

5-year horizon: Data collection protocols are agreed
10-year horizon: Modeling finds increasing success
25-year horizon: Tested outcomes guide social interventions

5.1.2 Digital democracy

One of the challenges for democracy is to engage the widest range of people in its practice and activity. Digital tools offer powerful new ways to do this by offering alterntive means for citizens to debate and discuss, communicate, find solutions, allocate resources and, ultimately, govern themselves.This creates the potential for dramatic changes in democracy, making it more represenative, efficient and capable. Radar, page 215.

Anticipation in a nutshell

5-year horizon: Digital tools become commonplace in local community projects
10-year horizon: Digital-aware politicians gain an advantage
25-year horizon: Algorithms become vital tools in the democratic process

5.1.3 Collaborative behavior

Technology that enhances collaborative behavior clearly has an important role to play in bringing people together, supporting their collective behavior and ensuring its fruitfulness, which is why so much work is being done on collaborative tools. However, collective behavior does not always produce the intended or best results. Groupthink and herding behavior can push groups towards dangerously wrong-headed actions and amplify negative trends such as racism, unhealthy behaviors and online hate. Computer modeling provides a way to study how collective intelligence emerges or why it sometimes doesn’t, helping to find ways to avoid problematic scenarios. Radar, page 216.

Anticipation in a nutshell

5-year horizon: Modeling of complex systems seeds responsive urban infrastructure
10-year horizon: Frameworks for ethical research into collective intelligence are agreed
25-year horizon: Computer models assist transnational collaboration

Actions & Debates – Taking the Pulse of Society

The GESDA Digital Pulse of Society addresses how the advances covered in the Radar are reshaping, or will reshape, how we see ourselves as human beings, the way we interact with each other and our relation to the environment, including their applications, potential and implications. Across all platforms, engagement on social media was skewed towards older contributors, with only 43 percent of contributors younger than 34 years old – making Phakeng’s outreach through the Citizens Forum and its initiatives all the more important. Radar, page 275.

Science & Diplomacy – What do people say?

Over 12 months the overall sentiment towards science and diplomacy was largely positive due to associations with initiatives emphasizing the enormous potential of digital technologies in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and driving sustainable practices, focusing on “ethical AI.” The European Parliament committee’s AI Act also drew positive sentiment in part because of its ban on facial recognitionf in public spaces, predictive policing tools new transparency requirements for generative AI applications such as ChatGPT. Radar, page 301.

Opportunities: Taking the Pulse of Society

The GESDA Summit Youth Cohort draws 12 young people whose participation is based on the nominations and support of GESDA partner institutions, including South Africa’s University of Cape Town, Swissnex, Swiss Young Academy of Scientists, Villars Institute and XPRIZE Foundation. Among them are three participants chosen from the Youth and Anticipation Initiative led by Phakeng, who encourages them to share their thoughts and what they hear, learn and reflect on during the summit sessions and to share their views on the future of science and diplomacy. Radar, page 330.