Although Makerere College was established as a government college in 1922, it was not until 1949 that the Inter-University Council for Higher Education in the Colonies ‘agreed to recognize it as having attained the status of a university college’. A report in The Times explained the ‘special relationship with the University of London’, which ensured that ‘students at the college will now be able to read for the degrees in Arts and Science of the University of London’ (The Times, 9 March 1950, 6).

Cherry Gertzel argued that in Africa ‘university education saw its real beginnings in the 1950s’ (Crowder ed., 1984, 446). The Asquith Commission in 1945, which became the ‘basis of official higher education policy’, recognised the need for ‘true university, rather than professional, education’ and emphasised the importance of preparing students for University of London exams (The Journal of Negro Education, Autumn 1957, 521). Gertzel suggested that ‘tertiary education went ahead much faster in East than Central Africa’ and further suggested that ‘the force of nationalism and the dictates of manpower planning accelerated the pace of expansion’. Governments increasingly looked to African manpower and sought ‘to create that new ruling class to whom they hoped to hand over power’ (Crowder ed., 1984, 445). The Journal of Negro Education suggested in 1957 that ‘Makerere graduates have begun to play a part in nascent nationalist movements’, yet critics complained about the ‘traditional’ British education provided, which they argued created leaders and educators ‘far removed from [their] people’ (Chilver, 1957, 524:Africa Special Report, 2, October 1957, 4).

East African College was available for schools and training colleges from the Central Film Library. A letter from the Treasury to the COI in June 1947 had considered the production  – ‘it might be possible to show something of both school and higher education in one film’ – and suggested that in the interests of economy only one film on education in Africa should be made. The letter further claimed that ‘the purpose of these films is mainly to show non-African audiences what we are doing to further the development of the colonies’ (Vaughan, 1983, 160). An article in Colonial Cinema in 1947, reprinted from a COI booklet, stated that ‘a film dealing with higher education will take the form of a career story’, following a male student (Colonial Cinema, June 1947, 39).

The production company, Editorial Film Productions, was one of the many independent documentary units which proliferated from the late 1940s. By 1950, it was already beginning to specialise in international subject matter, and would do so again in coming years when it became the preferred production company for films sponsored by Unilever. Although Robert Kingston Davies, who had returned to East Africa in 1946 to produce films for the Colonial Office, is credited as the director on this film, COI correspondence indicates that Stewart McAllister was more directly responsible for the production (Vaughan, 1983, 158). McAllister is best known as the editor of Humphrey Jennings’ wartime documentaries and one of his diary entries from 1947 states that ‘I have been up to the eyes – first of all finding all about Makerere, the university sort of place here and then writing a script on it and now trying to film it all’. McAllister further noted the troubles he was experiencing on the shoot, with ‘everything going wrong needless to say and all my time spent taking the film cameras to bits and trying to make things work’ (Vaughan, 1983, 160).