Author:
Charles Cyril Ndlovu – Managing Director, CPR Holdings
Introduction
Longtermism challenges us to care deeply about how our actions today affect people many generations hence. It asks: do we really treat the distant future as morally relevant, and if so, are we doing enough to steward it well? In Essays on Longtermism: Present Action for the Distant Future, the editors Hilary Greaves, Jacob Barrett, and David Thorstad bring together work examining not only whether we should accept longtermism, but also how to forecast, set priorities, and redesign institutions with far-future impacts in view.
From my experience leading a construction and renewable energy firm in South Africa, I believe one of the highest-leverage ways to operationalize longtermism is through durable infrastructure, resilient standards, and skills development. In contexts where materials, governance, and climate risk are often overlooked, embedding longtermist thinking into how we build things and who is trained to maintain them can carry benefits for a century or more.
In what follows, I argue that:
1. Infrastructure decisions are inherently long-term in nature, so integrating longtermist criteria (durability, resilience, skills transfer) yields outsized future value;
2. Institutions or norms that enforce or incentivize such decisions are both necessary and feasible;
3. Ethical entrepreneurship in Africa has a unique role in shaping these norms;
4. While near-term urgency is real, a combined strategy (meeting present needs + building for the far future) can be both morally justified and practically attainable.
1. Why Infrastructure is Longtermist by Default
Any building, road, solar installation, or water system lays down legacies. A badly built school roof, for instance, requires frequent repairs, wastes resources, and may reduce trust in public investment. By contrast, quality construction, used adaptable materials, and maintenance plans lock in benefits: safety, lower cost of upkeep, resilience to climate shocks. These are “persistent states” in longtermist vocabulary—once established, they endure, shaping the future. Essays on Longtermism emphasizes that influencing which persistent states the world enters is one of the strongest channels for far-future effect.
Additionally, forecasts of what kinds of climate, demographic, and economic pressures will arrive matter. If infrastructure is designed for short-term cost minimization, but without accounting for warming, flooding, or supply-chain risks, those buildings may fail prematurely or impose high retrofit costs. On the other hand, using standards that anticipate future stresses, choosing robust materials, designing for adaptability, and building local capacity (i.e. training local engineers, masons, electricians) helps ensure that the infrastructure not only lasts but continues delivering value without constant external aid.
2. Institutions and Norms: Enabling Longtermist Infrastructure
Infrastructure alone isn’t enough. Without institutions or norms that set and enforce quality and future thinking, short-term pressures (cost, speed, political cycles) dominate. The recent collection Essays on Longtermism includes a chapter exploring “Longtermist Political Philosophy: An Agenda for Future Research” (Andreas T. Schmidt & Jacob Barrett) arguing for institutional longtermism—the view that when evaluating institutions we should give significant weight to their long-term effects.
Some institutional tools that can help in this regard:
Regulatory standards and codes that require durability, climate resilience, etc., and that are enforced over the building life-cycle.Public procurement rules that favour contractors who commit to apprenticeships, local sourcing, renewable-energy compatibility, and maintenance plans.Vocational and technical training institutions that ensure skills are passed on; certified mastery in construction trades is essential.
Mechanisms for accountability over time, possibly including “future generations” bodies or a retrospective review of infrastructure choices. Essays on Longtermism discusses retrospective accountability as a way to give future generations a voice in evaluating current institutions.By combining strong infrastructure norms with institutional reforms, we lower the risk that short-termism (e.g. “cheap now, break later”) wins out.
3. Ethical Entrepreneurship: A Practitioner’s Lever
As a leader in construction & renewable energy, I see four levers that business and entrepreneurs can pull to embed longtermism on the ground:Adopting longtermist design as a competitive advantage: Firms that offer solar-ready roofing, flood-resilient foundations, insulated walls (for climate control) etc., are investing more upfront but deliver better outcomes over decades. Clients eventually prefer less maintenance, fewer failures, and better efficiency.
Building skills pipelines: Training locals in durable construction, waterproofing, renewable energy maintenance ensures that infrastructure can be maintained without external specialists. This reduces the risk of failure from neglect and improves local capacity.
Using technology and materials wisely: Where possible, choosing materials with lower environmental footprint, incorporating renewable energy, and planning for upgradeability (e.g. wiring for future power generation, or modular design).
Advocacy and norm setting: Influencing local regulators, municipalities, and peers to prioritize long-run quality, transparency in tenders (lifecycle cost, not just cost now), and resilience.
These strategies align closely with what Essays on Longtermism and earlier works on strong longtermism recommend: not only preventing existential risks, but also shaping civilization’s trajectory (quality, values, resilience) in ethically significant ways.
4. Reconciling Near-Term Urgency with Long-Term Thinking
A common critique of longtermism is that focusing on the far future may neglect urgent present suffering. For regions with poverty, malnutrition, disease, or failing infrastructure, immediate needs are stark. However, I argue that far-future and near-term goals need not compete; often they reinforce one another:
Building a reliable health centre with a roof built for climate stress helps present patients and future users.
Investing in water supply that resists drought helps current communities and protects future ones from water insecurity.
Training youth in renewable technologies addresses present unemployment and builds a workforce able to maintain green infrastructure as technology evolves.
Moreover, many cost-effective longtermist interventions are also good near-term interventions. Essays on Longtermism discusses interventions beyond just existential risk that produce persistent social benefits; in standard population models, some non-risk interventions are shown to be at least as cost-effective over the long term as risk mitigation itself, when we account for enduring benefits.
Thus a dual strategy—meeting urgent needs while building for durability and resilience—is both morally permissible and practically wise. It guards against the moral risk of neglecting those alive today, without forfeiting responsibility to future generations.
5. Challenges and Risks
Putting longtermism into action through infrastructure and skills faces several challenges:
Up-front costs and resistance: Durable design, higher standards, and training increase short-term costs. Governments or clients with tight budgets may resist paying more now.
Uncertainty about future conditions: Climate change, technological shifts, supply-chain disruptions—these can make predictions difficult. Over-building for some risks may result in waste. Yet Essays on Longtermism addresses these epistemic challenges: many authors accept that we are “clueless” about some far-future effects, but argue that the existence of massive possible future benefits, plus persistent states and cultural evolution, make it reasonable to take precautions and design for robustness.
Lock-in risk: Standards or values fixed today might be suboptimal later (e.g. if priorities or technology shift). Aron Vallinder’s chapter “Longtermism and Cultural Evolution” warns against prematurely locking in certain values or norms without allowing variation and adaptability.
Governance and maintenance over time: Even well-built infrastructure fails without maintenance. If institutions decay, or trained people leave, the benefits peter out. Ensuring that institutions are resilient and local capacity is sustained is essential.
These challenges mean that implementation must be careful: combining flexibility, monitoring, community involvement, and local ownership.
Conclusion: A Blueprint for Moral Engineering
Africa is at a pivotal moment: rapid urbanisation, growing climate stresses, demands for better services, coupled with potential for renewable energy, local tech, and youth skills. If we commit now to embedding longtermism into how we build — choosing quality, resilience, transferable skills, good regulation — we can shape structures that deliver lives well lived, not just now but many decades hence.
To summarise:
Infrastructure decisions naturally impact far into the future; it's strategic to design with durability, adaptability, and local capacity in mind.
Institutions—regulation, procurement, vocational training, accountability mechanisms—can shift incentives so that long-term value becomes part of the norm.
Ethical entrepreneurship can lead by example, showing that long-term thinking is cost-effective when lifecycle costs, maintenance, and future risk are counted.
Near-term needs are urgent and real, but long-termism doesn’t require neglect of the present; many long-term interventions serve both present and future.
Admitting uncertainty, guarding against lock-in, emphasising maintenance and adaptability, and local ownership are essential guardrails.
Call to Action / Questions for Reflection
How can regional governments and ministries of public works in Africa embed lifecycle costing, climate resilience, and local training into procurement requirements?
What partnerships between private construction firms, vocational schools, and renewable energy providers could accelerate local capacity?
How can practitioners share data about long-term failures (e.g., when infrastructure built for “cheap now” fails early) to shift norms and build empirical knowledge?
Longtermism, Institutional Longtermism, Infrastructure, Skills, Africa, Climate Resilience
