In the late 1990s, Arthur Muliro at the Society for International Development www.sidint.org began organising public interest scenario work in Kenya. He asked Barbara Heinzen to help design and facilitate the process which was led by a Kenyan team from the Institute for Economic Affairs in Nairobi. After a successful process in Kenya, SID organised similar work in Tanzania, Uganda and the East Africa region as a whole. Tanzania: www.tutafika.org Uganda: www.scenarios.ws/uganda
Many of the challenges in East Africa have been similar to corporate work. However, in corporate assignments, management’s working assumptions are discovered through an interview process. How could a small group interview a nation? Equally important in East Africa have been the undiscussable emotional issues that affect perceptions and responses to public disputes. How could those be honestly surfaced and addressed? This challenge was particularly acute in Uganda with its legacies of trauma and mutual suspicion left by Idi Amin’s rule and continuing civil war in the North.
Perhaps the greatest success of these projects was the creation of a network of people who now bring to public life a great personal flexibility and knowledge of the hazards and possibilities their societies are facing. Just as important, the scenario work has generated critical public discussions about the future of East African societies.
Similar projects have been proposed in Nepal, the Basque country of Spain, Israel, Somalia and Northern Ireland. Barbara Heinzen has also worked on smaller public assignments in Malaysia and Israel.
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