Learning to Anticipate: Adult Education, Future Skills, and Anticipatory Governance in Latin America – Evidence From the Colombian Context

Adult learning and lifelong learning (LLL) systems in Latin America face a structural crisis that existing policy frameworks are not equipped to diagnose correctly. This reflection argues that the region suffers a double failure: a diagnostic failure, in which policy responds to symptoms rather than structural drivers; and an anticipatory failure, in which the gap between strategic foresight and action-oriented governance remains systematically unaddressed. Two forces are making this failure more urgent: demographic change advancing faster than official projections anticipated, generating LLL demands linked to an emerging silver economy that policy is not yet designed to serve; and digital transformation that is widening existing educational gaps along generational, territorial, and institutional lines, not simply creating new opportunities. Drawing on anticipatory governance theory and futures studies, and grounded primarily in the Colombian context, this reflection proposes a policy positioning framework for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), identifies a fourfold structural disconnection, and advances a transformative research agenda. For practitioners and policy designers, the central argument is this: LLL systems that cannot read the signals of change before they become crises cannot serve the populations that need them most.