As the age of independence dawned in East Africa, the region’s political map narrowed. By the early 1960s, “East Africa” had come to mean four core territories: Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika, and Zanzibar. Rwanda and Burundi, once loosely tied to regional affairs, had been politically rerouted by differing colonial masters. What remained was a quartet stumbling toward nationhood—Tanganyika in December 1961, Uganda in October 1962, Zanzibar and Kenya in December 1963.
But within weeks of its independence, Zanzibar combusted. The Sultan was overthrown in a revolution that replaced dynastic rule with socialism, culminating in a hasty union with Tanganyika to form the United Republic of Tanzania in April 1964. This merger marked the first of many complex dances between nationalism and regionalism—dances that would come to define postcolonial East Africa.
How Not to Build a Union
Ali Mazrui’s analysis throws a cold lens on East Africa’s integration project. Unlike the celebratory tones often reserved for post-independence triumphs, Mazrui opens with a challenge: why has regional unity faltered, and why is Uganda—the most strategically positioned of the trio—so reluctant?
Mazrui does not shy away from contradiction. Uganda, he argues, may have benefited most from regional unity, yet it has been the most hesitant to commit. In the race toward a political federation of East Africa, Julius Nyerere of Tanganyika famously offered to delay his country’s independence. Jomo Kenyatta entered into negotiations in earnest. Uganda? It stood aloof, insisting on sovereignty guarantees before even entertaining the idea of federation.
This posture led some to call Uganda anti-Pan-African. But Mazrui suggests a more complex reading: perhaps Uganda did not choose Pan-Africanism, but had it thrust upon her.
Britain, the Nile, and Uganda’s Accidental Significance
Uganda’s critical role in East African integration began not with ideology but geography. Its central location placed it at the headwaters of the Nile—a fact not lost on the British Foreign Office. Though reluctant to intervene at first, Britain was finally moved by imperial realpolitik. Control the Nile, they reasoned, and you control Egypt. And so Uganda became the “natural key to the Nile Valley,” justifying the British protectorate in 1894.
But to reach Uganda, Britain had to build a railway through Kenya. Thus, interest in Kenya emerged from interest in Uganda. And when Tanganyika passed from German to British control after World War I, it created a rare triad of African nations ruled by one imperial power.
Here lies Mazrui’s deeper point: while imperialism often divides, it can also unify. British control created common administrative practices, legal structures, and economic networks. It also meant that Makerere University in Kampala, founded in 1922, could serve as a regional intellectual crucible—producing the very elite that would steer the postcolonial states.
Had Uganda been ruled by France, Kenya by Britain, and Tanganyika by Germany, the dream of a united East Africa would have been stillborn.
Makerere: The Unofficial University of East Africa
If railways connected the land, Makerere connected the minds. Long before Nairobi and Dar es Salaam established their own universities, Makerere had already become the breeding ground of East Africa’s political and administrative elite.
Mazrui is particularly fond of this institution, crediting it with producing not just graduates but a common political vocabulary. Its alumni included Julius Nyerere and Milton Obote, along with a swath of cabinet members across the region. Makerere was a unifier in the most literal sense—teaching the future rulers to speak the same bureaucratic language, often in English.
It was this shared training ground that made a pan-East African administration seem possible in the early years of independence.
Unity by Rail and Water: The Infrastructure of Belonging
Britain’s integrationist momentum had side effects. The Uganda Railway (built from Mombasa to Lake Victoria) and the Owen Falls Dam in Jinja were more than engineering marvels—they were instruments of political geography.
The Nile linked Uganda to Egypt, the railway tied Kampala to Mombasa, and British economic policy sought to knit the territories into a single customs and services union. The East African Common Services Organization (EACSO) and the later East African Community (EAC) were direct outgrowths of this infrastructure-first strategy.
But unity on paper is not unity in spirit.
On the Edge of Africa: Uganda’s Afro-Arab Dilemma
Uganda’s Pan-African position was more than economic—it was also racial and religious. Situated at the fault line of Afro-Arab relations, Uganda shared a border with Sudan. This border would become a flashpoint, particularly during the Sudanese civil war between North and South.
Ethnic and cultural sympathies with Southern Sudanese could have dragged Uganda into open conflict. But it didn’t. Instead, Uganda resisted the temptation. In the words of Minister Sam Odaka, “We cannot denounce racialism in southern Africa and support it when it comes to southern Sudan.” In doing so, Uganda played a quiet but crucial role in maintaining the fragile unity of the Organisation of African Unity.
Tanzania’s Ujamaa and the Moral Economy of Toil
Mazrui turns his gaze to internal unity, focusing especially on the ideological experiments in Tanzania. Julius Nyerere’s Arusha Declaration in 1967 laid down the ethic of Ujamaa—a socialism based on rural communal living and moral self-reliance.
Mazrui is both admiring and cautious. He notes the symbolic power of slogans like Uhuru na Kazi (Freedom and Work) and the enforcement of self-help schemes. These were not just about productivity. They were about nation-building, about giving independence a tangible, sweat-drenched meaning.
But he also warns that excessive focus on toil risks eroding innovation and personal ambition. The hoe may be noble, but it’s no substitute for structural transformation.
Kenya and Uganda: Africanising Capitalism
Where Tanzania leaned left, Kenya and Uganda turned right—at least economically. Their vision of equality was not about eliminating class but ensuring Africans joined the class hierarchy. This meant Africanising commerce and industry, encouraging African ownership through share schemes and selective incentives.
The House of Manji’s partial African share issue in 1967 became the poster child of this model. So did policy measures to ensure that non-African business owners (mostly Asians) brought Africans into their enterprises. The result was an emerging African bourgeoisie—not a classless society but a racially mixed middle class.
Mazrui sees this as a calculated risk. It’s not Marxism, but it’s also not laissez-faire capitalism. It is “state-induced free competition”—a paradox in action, but one designed to neutralize racial resentment without crippling economic growth.
The Danger of Ethnic Privilege and Revolutionary Spillover
Even as East African leaders tried to balance tribal and national identities, the specter of ethnic privilege loomed. Rwanda and Zanzibar, Mazrui reminds us, were shaken by violent revolutions rooted in perceptions of racial and ethnic dominance. The Tutsi and Arab elites, respectively, failed to racially integrate their ruling classes, leading to explosive upheavals.
East Africa’s lesson, Mazrui argues, is simple: unity is not just political or economic—it must be social. If elites are racially homogenous, they invite rebellion. If middle classes are mixed, they insulate societies from identity-based revolution.
Conclusion: The Unglamorous Art of Balancing
Mazrui’s concluding tone is guardedly optimistic. East Africa, he insists, must take risks. It must experiment—with socialism, capitalism, party systems, and federation models. Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania may be diverging in method, but the diversity itself is a strength.
Regional integration is not dead. It is simply being reimagined—one institution, one policy, and one generation at a time.