The June 2014 State Magazine has a great article on page 9, titled "Country X".

This very interesting article gives a description of the process the State Department undertakes to create new fictional countries and case studies for the Group Exercise.
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The article reads:

Recent Foreign Service officer (FSO) candidates who survived the day long oral assessment may recall a testing scenario based on the fictional nation of Sythia, a multi ethnic, aspiring NATO-member country with a serious drug-trafficking problem. Other candidates may have been “assigned” on test day to the fictional U.S. Embassy 
in Kuman, a poor, former Soviet client in the Third World with an authoritarian government and nascent democratic movement that was struggling to attract investment by American oil companies.

Some of those candidates are now FSOs, and they are helping the Board of Examiners (BEX) develop the next fictional country, known so far only as “Country X.” BEX will use this country in future versions of its famed group exercise, a key component of the oral assessment and a challenging FSO rite of passage.  

“We regularly update our testing materials with new fictional countries,” explained BEX Staff Director Woody Staeben. “Our materials should describe a place that could be a plausible imaginary country but should not be recognizable as any actual country.”  BEX staff developing the characteristics of Country X based on their years of experience serving at posts overseas—plus a generous dose of imagination—recently invited new FSOs to play the role of oral assessment candidates in a mock group exercise designed to test the utility of Country X. The FSO “candidates” had to defend fictional projects the embassy might implement in Country X and then, since the scenario dictates limited resources, reach consensus on the projects to support or discard. 

As part of the oral assessment, the exercise tests prospective Foreign Service officers’ planning and organizing skills, interpersonal skills, leadership, judgment, oral communication and composure.  BEX staffers observed the mock exercise and debriefed the role players, asking such questions as whether the features of the new fictional country were plausible and whether the projects proposed made sense, given the country’s geography, economy and political climate.

“Feedback from our role players helps refine our picture of Country X and the group exercise projects,” said Mary Kruger, the senior BEX assessor who coordinates development of the new country for the board. “BEX officers are now revising the projects they drafted based on that input.”
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The entire process of developing a new Country X can take more than one year. Before Country X is used in a real group exercise, it must receive a name. Kruger also oversees this process and receives plenty of novel suggestions from colleagues. When Country X finally comes into use for assessments, it might have a name such as Andruvia, Bajukistan or Chomlandia. 

The latest (July/August 2014) issue of State Magazine has an inspirational article that we found very interesting for candidates trying to learn about their potential careers as FSOs.  This article shows the positive impact that the Embassy has on a country with terrible political and economic problems, and we think you will enjoy it.

From magazine (page 9)
In May, a team of seven young Zimbabweans ranging from 19 to 24 years old won a startup competition by creating a device that allows any conductive object to be transformed into a musical instrument.  

The team won $78,000 in prizes at Startup Weekend Harare, an event that launched 11 viable startups in just 48 hours. Startup Weekend is an American nonprofit that helps organize events that bring together entrepreneurs
to pitch ideas, form teams, develop a minimum viable product and compete for prizes during a single weekend.
Zimbabwe’s first competition of this type began with a Friday night event where nearly 50 of the 90 participants gave a 60-second pitch about their proposed business. Pitches described the core idea and team needs, such as software developers, social media strategists and marketing professionals. Participants then voted for their favorites, formed 11 teams based on skill and interest, and worked with mentors from the technology, media and business worlds to refine their ideas. By Sunday afternoon, the teams had developed working websites, mobile apps and hardware, which they presented to a panel of judges.

The weekend was a collaborative effort, with Mercy Corps Zimbabwe providing logistical support and funding and a Harare-based technology and innovation center called Hypercube Hub (launched with Department of State funding) providing a venue and logistical and technical support.  Three Embassy Harare staff members served on the organizing committee, and the embassy facilitated corporate sponsorship from American and local companies and provided much of the equipment for the competition.  Using the Bureau of International Information Programs speaker program, the embassy also brought American entrepreneur Fahad Hassan, CEO and founder of Always Prepped, as a keynote speaker and roving team mentor. He provided participants with advice about financial models, marketing techniques, pricing and pitching ideas to investors.

Although Zimbabwe’s unemployment rate is estimated at over 80 percent, the country has a powerful combination of intellectual capital, infrastructure and English language capability, and events like Startup Weekend show that Zimbabweans are poised to drive an African tech boom. “The U.S. Embassy supports entrepreneurship programs like Startup Weekend because we know that Zimbabweans can launch new products, build new enterprises and contribute to Zimbabwe’s economic development through entrepreneurship,” Ambassador to Zimbabwe Bruce Wharton said.