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Bow your head and close your eyes for a moment and look ahead into East Africa. What do you see? A dark menace, a beautiful woman or are you afraid to stare into uncertainty?
In that case don’t worry because the ‘clairvoyants’ from Society for International Development (SID) peered for you into the East Africa up to 2040 and came up with triple stories otherwise known as the East Africa Scenarios Stories.
The stories come under three titles: I want to be a Star, I Want a Visa and Usiniharakishe (Don’t rush me).
In the first, E.A. is a woman named Cea whose magnificent beauty draws endless admirers. When the heroine, overwhelmed, succumbs because of the bright promises from these men, she’s raped and all her dreams shattered.
I Want a Visa is captured fantastically by a comic strip of poor citizens flocking to a new land with a beautiful thought on their minds: “Welcome to the new life…” but blind to a roadside signpost that reads, “Welcome to the shity!”
The last story describes “the struggle of the ordinary East Africans to retain and reclaim control over their most local assets and who learn that success is not guaranteed.”
These “fables of the future” are explored at length in a book, What do we want? What might we become? Imagining the future of East Africa, that was launched alongside the State of East Africa 2007 report at Kampala Golf Hotel a few weeks back and officiated by the Minister for East African Community affairs, Eriya Kategeya.
It remains for Timothy Kalyegira’s maverick seer to emerge from his hidden lair and tell us what he makes of the stories! Seriously though, the fables are a result of a three-year research on the region intended to stir our minds to the challenges East Africa is facing and what the future might look like.
Among more interesting revelations, the symbolic stories show that by 2013, more natives from the five East African countries will still be struggling to accept the regional bloc and the region will not have found jobs for its fast growing population.
Overall, the scenario stories dramatically provoke the leader and policy maker to study the forces shaping East Africa and also show ways through which these dynamics can be made to swing in favour of the people of East Africa and for the future.
