English came late to East Africa, since for a long time the colonialists were not really interested in Africa. Instead the Swahili towns on the coast (Kilwa, Zanzibar, Mombasa, Malindi, etc.) were used as stepping stones to the jewel of the imperial crown, India. The last decades of the 19^th century saw the establishment of British and German colonial power, mainly through Zanzibar. The most famous East African explorers Livingstone and Stanley (who met at Ujiji in 1871) were accompanied by other explorers and missionaries. The German missionaries Krapf, who founded Rabai near Mombasa in 1846, and Rebmann were the first Europeans to see the snows of Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya – but were not believed in Europe. Methodists opened a mission near Mombasa in 1862, Anglicans in Zanzibar in 1863 and Catholics in Bagamoyo in 1868. Ten years later they moved along the traditional trading route inland through Morogoro and Tabora to Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika. This shows that European intrusion followed the established Swahili trade routes – and used their language, Kiswahili, as a lingua franca.

The brief German interlude (from Carl Peter’s first “treaties” in 1884 to World War I) established not German but Kiswahili in the colony, and laid the foundation for its success as a truly national language in Tanzania later.

After the war some differences in colonial administration between Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika/Zanzibar can be attributed to the role of the white settlers in Kenya, but a lot of similarities remain, although Tanganyika was only held by the British as a Mandate from the League of Nations. The system of “indirect rule” through African leaders (developed by Lord Luggard in Nigeria) was introduced everywhere. In contrast to Rhodesia (esp. present-day Zimbabwe), where the settlers were given self-governance, the primacy of “African interests” was decided in 1923. This is documented in the Land Ordinance Act, which secured land rights for Africans and not only Europeans, over 2000 of whom had spread particularly in the “White Highlands” north of Mount Kenya and east of Mount Elgon. In reality, British rule established a three-class system with the white colonial officers and settlers at the top, the Indian in the middle and the Black Africans at the bottom.

The system of communication developed along the railway and highway lines with a few ethnic nuclei in fertile areas like Buganda, Kikuyuland/Mount Kenya or Chaggaland/Mount Kilimanjaro. The Indians had come to East Africa partly via the Swahili trade in Zanzibar, but mainly for the construction of the railways. They stayed not only in the (railway) administration but also as traders with their small dukas in the centres, often as “middleman”, who could be accused of exploitation by the European settlers and even more by the Africans. This made them easy targets for dictator Idi Amin, who caused their exodus from Uganda in 1972, and also for Africanisation policies in the other new nations.