10 - ABDALLA S. BUJRA, and Futures Studies in Africa: A Noticer’s Environmental Scanning

Introduction Environmental scanning is looking around to see what there might be in a certain field. It is purposive gallivanting, exploration or strollogy, ‘taking reflective walks’. It is analogous to an unbiased but anticipative fishing expedition. In this particular case, it is finding out through biographical tracking and literature survey whether Abdalla Bujra (1938–2025) interfaced with the discipline of futures studies, and if so, how and with what eOect. ‘Futures studies is an art and a science with a strong emphasis on imagination and creativity in creating different possible futures’. As part of this exploration, this paper historicises such findings, contextualises and looks at their wider implications in the realm of pedagogy. Our maintained hypothesis is Heraclitus’s concept of panta rei (‘everything flows’), that futures studies is a work in progress. So, as William Shakespeare reminds us, ‘all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances. And one man in his time plays many parts’. One such part played by Abdalla Bujra was to serve at the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP’s) African Futures (AF) regional project, based in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, during its first part (1992–1997) of the two-phase duration. His tenure there as expert in sociology and human resources development ran for three years, from the project’s beginning to 1995, as part of a regional team to champion long-term strategic thinking and planning in African countries. This project has been described as the embodiment of an unprecedented effort at ‘escaping the futures of the past’