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The records of the East African Community

Perhaps one of the least publicised and greatly under-utilised primary source materials in East Africa are the records of the defunct East African Community held at the Arusha International Conference Centre, Tanzania. These records document virtually every aspect of human life in Eastern Africa. By 1977, when the East African Community collapsed as a regional grouping of three partner states, namely Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, it had created vast quantities of records equivalent to that held in some of the national repositories in Africa. For over twenty years, these records have been in the custody of the Tanzania National Archives, which has made commendable efforts to ensure that this vital resource is not lost. In August 1998, the author led a team of specialists from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania mainland, Zanzibar and Lesotho to appraise, arrange, describe, box, and shelve these records. This article is based on information gathered during the workshop.