In East Africa regional higher education interactions and cooperation originates from the pre-independence era when Makerere University College was the only higher education institution in the region serving students from Kenya, the then Tanganyika, and Zanzibar in East Africa as well as from the then Rhodesia and Nyasaland in central and southern Africa, which now consist of Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Later in 1963, university colleges were formed in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as constituent colleges of the then University of East Africa that had been established during the era of independence of the four countries (Uganda, Kenya, Zanzibar and Tanganyika). Makerere College was the third constituent college of the University of East Africa.