Toil and Trouble. Diviner Tech and the Sustainability Transition by Nicola Robins 

The first Diviner Tech session showed how African diviners have been exploring how to make better decisions in uncertainty for millennia.

This session focuses on how diviner tech can be reframed to support contemporary decision-makers in the sustainability transition.

In Toil and Trouble, we notice how big consultancies are pulling in to punt sustainability in Africa. Their approaches and solutions are fast, linear and large-scale. Costs are vast, non-linear and indeterminate, disproportionately borne by those with no agency in decision-making.

In Totems to Tool, diviner thinking is re-framed as a simple cognitive tool for approaching uncertainty and complex decision-making.

In Territory and Talisman, the tool is applied in slow, messy and micro ways to help companies open the possibility space for sustainability innovation.

Nicola Robins is a founder of sustainability advisory firm Incite (www.incite.co.za) and a practicing diviner of the Majoye Sangoma lineage since 2002.

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