ABSTRACT
From the beginning of the century common services were introduced by amalgamating the services of the individual colonies. A Customs Union between Kenya and Uganda was fully operational by 1917, and ten years later it was extended to Tanganyika. The Second World War gave great stimulus to inter-territorial co-operation and at the beginning of 1948 Britain set up an East African High Commission to oversee the administration of the services shared by the British East African territories. The lesson is well known within Africa and, having failed to take up Kwame Nkrumah’s challenge to unite, many Africans have spent the first generation since independence setting up regional economic groupings in attempts to overcome the colonial inheritance of political balkanization and an inferior place in the world economic system. The 1967 Treaty was in effect the zenith of East African unity. Within ten years the East African Community had collapsed and the vision of political federation was yet another African mirage.
