ABSTRACT
T h e East African countries share with the rest of tropical Africa, and other under-developed regions of the world, those much-discussed evils and limitations which have
been summarized as poverty, ignorance, and disease. Along with these, and all they imply in the contemporary era of politi cal independence and of efforts towards modernization, there are two other crucial problems in each East African countrythe problems of unity and of identity. And these problems exist irrespective of the particular form and character of the political and economic systems of these countries. A critical factor at the core of these two problems is that o f ‘tribe5. To some extent this factor represents real divisions of the people on the ground ; to some extent it is a mental concept, strongly coloured by emo tion, made use of to ‘explain5 or to justify divisions which have their sources elsewhere. It has some basis in traditional and persisting cultural differences, and it has been given new forms and had attached to it new interests and loyalties. ‘Tribe5 means many things to many individuals-not the same thing to every one, nor even the same thing to particular persons or groups at different times. It is sometimes denied to exist at all; and it is often used as a facile explanation of enormously complex social, political, and economic crises.
