There is no other corner of Africa, or the world, that witnessed that level of disparate colonial activity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Burundi’s Alphonse Rugambarara is a good East African. A medical doctor, former politician, sports promoter, and more lately civil society activist and leading Bujumbura public intellectual, Rugambarara is a man with an eye for the off-beat detail.
Last Thursday, I was with him at a Nairobi event with several smart East Africans staring into a crystal ball trying to figure out the future of our region.
Up on the board was a map of East Africa. Rugambarara drew the attention of the two of who were sitting next to him to the fact that East Africa had had the largest number of “colonial encounters.”
Take Zanzibar. It was a Portuguese colony, and then the Arabs (Sultan of Oman) took it, and eventually the British. Tanganyika, which with Zanzibar formed the Tanzania Union, was colonised by the Germans, placed under the League of Nations after World War 1, then eventually became a British colony.
Uganda and Kenya, well, they were British “property.”
In a rare colonial foray, Italy ruled Somalia, lost it after World War II, and eventually the British pocketed that too. Italy also chewed but failed to swallow Ethiopia, and spat it out quickly.
To Ethiopia’s northeast is Djibouti. That territory was lorded over by France, but at that time it was called French Somaliland.
Burundi and Rwanda were ruled by Germany, and then Belgium. And the Belgians imposed that famously cruel colonial rule on Congo.
There is no other corner of Africa, or the world, that witnessed that level of disparate colonial activity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Why is this important? I couldn’t find anyone who has studied that matter, but I can hazard a few guesses.
First, I am inclined to think that this colonial jigsaw puzzle offers us one of the hitherto unacknowledged reasons why Kiswahili became the most widely spoken African language. Probably most people in East and Central Africa saw it as a neutral language because it was not rooted in the colonial maze around them.
We can also see a few things that would have been different if the region had had fewer colonial masters. For one, Somalia would never have gone to war. Secondly, it would probably be the biggest country in the region, as Djibouti, the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, and northern Kenya would all have been part of one big Somalia.
Also, Burundi and Rwanda would not exist. They would have been one big country together with eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and western Uganda. Buganda would be the most powerful kingdom in Africa, stretching from middle-western Uganda, to the Rift Valley in Kenya today.
Kenya and Tanzania would also not exist as separate countries. They would have been one country. And there would have been a coastal state stretching from Lamu, through to Dar es Salaam, to Pemba in Mozambique — including Zanzibar and Comoros islands. Most of (North) Sudan, all of South Sudan, northern Uganda, and northeast DRC would be one country.
Ethiopia, by my reckoning, would have been the smallest nation (in land size) in East Africa. History really has a wicked sense of humour!
Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group’s executive editor for Africa & Digital Media. E-mail: [email protected]. Twitter: @cobbo3
