ESJ Social Sciences www.eujournal.org 77 The Determinants of East African Economic Growth Silveria Mukwandiga Murungi Dr. Kenneth Okiro Dr. Winnie Nyamute Dr. Martine Oleche University of Nairobi, Kenya Doi:10.19044/esj.2023.v19n16p77 Submitted: 08 May 2023 Accepted: 05 June 2023 Published: 30 June 2023 Copyright 2023 Author(s) Under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 OPEN ACCESS Cite As: Murungi S.M., Okiro K., Nyamute W. & Oleche M. (2023). The Determinants of East African Economic Growth. European Scientific Journal, ESJ, 19 (16), 77. https://doi.org/10.19044/esj.2023.v19n16p77 Abstract This paper focuses on examining the effect of government external debt on economic growth, investigating the effect of interest rate on economic growth, establishing the effect of government domestic debt on economic growth, and examining the effect of budget deficit on economic growth. The study was carried out for three East African countries, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, over the study period of 1980-2019. Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ADL) Panel Approach was used to specifically establish the effect of government external debt, interest rate, government domestic debt, and budget deficit on economic growth. Pooled Mean Estimator (PMG) was used to estimate both the general and full sample model. The results showed that in the long run, government external debt and interest rate had negative but not statistically significant effect on economic growth for the three countries. On the other hand, government domestic debt and budget deficit had positive effect but not statistically significant effect on economic growth. The results of the short term showed that government external debt, government domestic debt, and budget deficit had a negative but not statistically significant effect on economic growth for the three countries, while interest rate had a negative and statistically significant effect on economic growth for the three countries. Firstly, in order to achieve a positive economic growth, it is recommended that the East African countries, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, should design and implement debt, interest rates, and budget deficit policies to fit and align with