Introduction
The flag of the East African Community is a light blue field crossed by narrow horizontal bands of black, yellow, red and green, with the emblem of the Community in the centre.
The emblem shows a map of the member states inside a ring, framed by a handshake and the name of the organisation.
Meaning & Symbolism
The narrow bands carry the colours shared across the member flags: black for the people of the region, yellow for the sun and for mineral wealth, red for the struggle for freedom, green for the land.
The blue field is the water that the Community is built around: Lake Victoria in the middle of it, and the Indian Ocean on its eastern edge.
The handshake in the emblem is cooperation between the partner states, which is the entire reason the organisation exists.
History of the East African Community Flag
The East African Community has failed once already. It was founded in 1967 by Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and collapsed in 1977 amid political disputes between the three governments. It was revived on 7 July 2000.
Since then it has grown to eight partner states: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia. The DRC joined on 11 July 2022, which gave the Community its first port on the Atlantic coast, on the other side of the continent from the Indian Ocean.
Its headquarters are in Arusha, Tanzania, which is also the intended capital of the political federation the members have discussed for decades.
Curiosities
- The organisation collapsed entirely in 1977 and was rebuilt from nothing in 2000.
- The accession of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2022 gave an East African bloc a port on the Atlantic.
- Its eight partner states have a combined population larger than that of the United States.
- The stated long term goal is a single federation with its capital at Arusha.
- The emblem contains a map of the member states, so the flag has had to be redrawn as the membership grew.
Download Flag
Download the flag of East African Community Flag in high-quality SVG vector format or PNG raster images. SVG files can be scaled to any size without losing quality.
Digital icon artwork; its proportions may differ from the official flag proportions listed on this page.