1 THE IMPLICATION OF ETHNICITY ON THE FORMATION OF THE EAST AFRICAN ECONOMIC FEDERATION: THE CASE OF UGANDA John Paul KASUJJA 1 ; Maurice Bakaluba TAMALE (PhD) 2 & Anthony Mugagga MUWAGGA (PhD) 3 1 PhD Candidate; Department of Humanities and Educational Foundations; College of Education and External Studies, Makerere University, Uganda. Lecturer, Nkumba University, Kampala, Uganda Email: jonpkasujja@gmail.com. Mobile: +256782880659 2 Department of humanities and Language education; College of Education and External studies, Makerere University, Uganda Mobile: +256772838938 3 Department of Foundations and Curriculum Studies College of Education and external Studies Makerere University amugagga@educ.mak.ac.ug Mobile +256772456245 ABSRACT The design of economic policies in East Africa that promote inter-ethnic cooperation remains poorly understood by the East African legislators, and the architectures of the East African Federation. This paper examines how central government economic policies towards ethnic diversity affect inter-ethnic relations in East Africa, putting emphasis on Uganda. Despite their largely shared geography, history and colonial institutional legacy, the post independent governments of East African states especially Uganda, have followed economically different radical ethnic policies along a range of national economic dimensions. This has caused economic inequality and regional imbalances, which have impacted on the prospects of the East African economic unity, thus forming the basis of this research. Keywords: Ethnicity, Economics and Federation. INTRODUCTION The prospect of federalism has been frequent and pervasive in post-colonial Africa and a variety of explanations have been offered to account for this phenomenon. The biggest challenge has / is the structural models of ethnic strife, which have relied on the contrast between ranked and unranked systems of ethnic stratification (Harowitz: 1985). For this, attempted federations have relied on the cultural division of labour; where individuals have been assigned to roles to specific types of occupations and other social role on the basis of observable cultural traits (Blanton, Mason and Athow, 2001: 475). In this research, the cultural division of labour is synonymous with ethnic identity in the sense that the social structure of the nation, state, or federal states is characterized by one ethnic group being subordinate to the other. Thus, ethnicity and class coincide, as social mobility for subordinate group members is restricted by the inscriptive criteria of ethnic models and as a consequence, ethnic identity is reinforced and ethnic solidarity is intensified in a state, or federation because one’s ethnic identity cannot be divorced from one’s economic status and political interests (Nielsen, 1985). Thus, for this research argues that where the system of social – stratification link ethnic identity and economic status so closely in the state, or federation, it confers meaning to ethnic identity that will persist in a federation of states like in East Africa so long as the linkage between status and the inscriptive stigmata of ethnicity remains. The relative autonomy of ethnic groups with respect to status – hierarchy will often be reinforced by their International Journal of Innovative Social Sciences & Humanities Research 2(2):1-14, June 2014 © SEAHI PUBLICATIONS www.seahipub.org ISSN: 2354-2926