Civil Aviation in East Africa 1946-1986: Outline of a History

With this project I aim to outline the unwritten history of civil aviation in East Africa. I use this history as a lens to take a fresh look at some classic questions as follows: how did the human fascination with the capacity to fly influence the ways African states and nations imagined and constructed themselves after independence and how did mid-twentieth century Africans engage with modernity and the larger world? The way intersectionality played out in mid-twentieth century global aviation are key in answering these questions. I intend to mainstream both Africa
as a field in aviation and transport history, and African history as a field in broader historical debates. This mainstreaming can be understood as a decolonisation of both fields in two ways. First, by presenting an Africa-based case of a global industry that has been striving for international standardization since 1944, leaving no space for any deviation that could be seen as “exotic” or “African”, and second by presenting this history in line with aviation history as it played out in other parts of the world, taking it out of the “African box” that keeps history colonised.