The East Africa Journal was the monthly magazine of the East African Institute of Social and Cultural Affairs, published from Uniafric House on Koinange Street in Nairobi and described on its own masthead as “east africa’s leading magazine of opinion”. Its patrons were the three heads of state — JOMO KENYATTA, JULIUS NYERERE and MILTON OBOTE — and its Board of Governors ran to TOM MBOYA and MWAI KIBAKI for Kenya, Bibi Titi Mohamed and Wilbert Chagula for Tanzania, and OKOT p’BITEK of Makerere for Uganda. BETHWELL A. OGOT was Secretary General of the Institute, and became the journal’s editor in August 1967.
Two of the presidents wrote in it. Milton Obote opens the April 1967 number with “Language and National Identification” and returns in October 1968 with “The Footsteps of Revolution”. Tom Mboya writes on Kenyan intellectuals and the KANU government in March 1967 — and the September 1969 issue is his memorial, published two months after his assassination, with tributes from Obote, Ogot, ALI MAZRUI, Lester Pearson, Colin Legum and Dharam Ghai.
Alongside the politics runs a literary magazine of real weight. Three numbers here are given over to creative writing — January 1967 guest-edited by DAVID RUBADIRI, September 1967 by LENNARD OKOLA, and January 1968 — and GRACE OGOT appears in six separate issues, with fiction, with her essay “The African Writer”, and as the subject of a review of The Promised Land. OKOT p’BITEK publishes “Song of the Malaya” and “De-Hellenising the Church” here; Okello Oculi, Jonathan Kariara, Joseph Kariuki, Peter Nazareth, Leonard Kibera, Amin Kassam, Marjorie Oludhe-Macgoye and Ali Mazrui all appear as poets as well as essayists.
The Library holds twenty-six consecutive-run issues from January 1967 to December 1969, including the whole of 1968. They were acquired with the support of the Open Society Foundations under its 2026 grant to the OlongoAfrica Library.
