For two decades, Yoweri Museveni has pursued a vision of East Africa not as a collection of competing sovereignties but as a unified civilization capable of commanding its own navy, launching its own satellites, and speaking with one voice to the world. Now, as chair of the East African Community, he has tempered that ambition into a confederation proposal—a slower path that asks nations to share without surrendering. The idea is architecturally sound, yet it arrives in a region where institutions crumble under unpaid dues, borders bristle with informal barriers, and the citizens who would inh