Adapting to independence: The East Africa Association, post-colonial business networks and economic development

The relationship between British business and decolonisation has been much examined, with the most convincing arguments showing that business did not lead decolonisation, and that relationships between officials in the Colonial Office and British businessmen were not always close. Nonetheless, businesses had to find ways to respond to the changes brought about by decolonisation. This chapter looks at one way that business leaders sought to do so: the formation of the East Africa Association in 1964, covering Britain’s former colonies of Tanganyika (joining with Zanzibar to become Tanzania in 1964), Uganda and Kenya. The independence of these countries in the early 1960s had repercussions for business relations. Before independence, businessmen had been able to rely upon British colonial policies to ensure a secure and profitable environment for themselves; in the post-colonial era, businessmen feared, the British government would no longer be able to promote their interests to such a degree, and government interests might differ from their own. Companies would also be operating in newly independent nation-states which were increasingly keen to assert their independence on the world stage, and critical of what they perceived as economic neo-colonialism and dependency. In dealing with these challenges, British businesses showed that they could adapt to the circumstances of independence. In spite of David Fieldhouse’s assertion that ‘British business firms never thought very clearly about the prospects of decolonization’, British businesses did make plans. By the time independence came to Britain’s East African colonies in the early 1960s, businesses had experienced these changes in former British colonies in other parts of the world. The work of Nicholas White on Malaya, Sarah Stockwell on the Gold Coast/Ghana, and Stephanie Decker on Nigeria and Ghana clearly shows the adaptability of businesses in responding to independence.