This paper contributes to an understanding of the main factors and actors that create the imperative for educational change in the six member countries of the East African Community (EAC) and how governance dynamics reflect on their policy positions. The method of study is qualitative and uses mainly existing literature as a synthesis. The study notes that the main drivers of educational change in the region are national and political transformation agenda; foreign aid conditionality; the advent and revival of the East African Community; and patronage, clientelism and corruption inherent in the neo-patrimonial set-up of the state. The member countries of the bloc initially drew upon the imperative of nationbuilding back in the 1960s to assign value to educational change as intertwined with Independence from colonial rule. Orthodox reform later assumed greater prominence in the 1980s and 1990s as aid conditionality drastically undermined gains made in educational expansion. Reforms undertaken in late 1990s and 2000s have been in response to the quest for democratisation in East Africa. Amid the clamour for policy convergence on educational change, there is need for a regionwide process of mutual policy borrowing, considerable harmonisation of curricula for secondary & higher education, and increased student and staff mobility. The study concludes that the history of state formation, political competition and statesociety relations in the EAC points to a complex variable of macro policy convergence in educational change and governance that calls for consummate tact as the region seeks a market-mediated identity and contemplates political federation.