Federal Design and Supranational Integration Plans for East Africa: Regional Geopolitics, the Changing Global Order, and the Imperial Constitutional Repertoire

Abstract

In the midst of tectonic changes to the global order, and within the context of unprecedented volatility in regional geopolitics, the political future of East Africa is no longer easy to predict. Ideas for a federation bringing together the countries of the region had been around for more than a hundred years. As the world’s attention shifts to what the next global order might look like, plans for regional federal unions are likely to re-emerge. This article examines the impact of regional geopolitics, the changing global order, and the constitutional repertoire of the British Empire on federalism debates. There is one historical episode when the abstract federal plans for supranational integration in East Africa were put into action and concrete steps were taken, not only to politically integrate, but also to merge the key policies of transportation, taxation, communication, customs, and to create federal institutions to devise and administer these policies. Supranational integration between member countries was to be paralleled by stage-by-stage democratic reforms within the member states. Relying on the constitutional repertoire and experience of other federal systems in their Empire – now reformed and renamed as the Commonwealth – the British devised a detailed roadmap in 1953 and started laying the foundations for a federation. By 1963 the project was taken over by the changing global order and new regional dynamics. What was designed (with the aid of the imperial constitutional repertoire) was out of step with the times (marked by majoritarian political ideas and a desire for speedy modernization through centralization). The article examines the various official documents on the federal design of the union and the projected democratic reforms within the members, contrasting this with the changes in regional and global geopolitics. Also covered are secondary sources from the time-period. The lesson from this investigation highlights how in moments of big changes to the regional and global order, geopolitics tends to trump the intricacies and technicalities of constitutional and administrative design.