There are four reasons for treating the history of the African Association in special detail. First, it was the earliest African organisation for which much documentary evidence survives, the earliest to leave extensive contemporary records of what Africans were writing and saying to one another, although these documents often remain unstudied in private hands and need to be supplemented by systematic oral research. Second, the association's development was shaped by and illustrated the colonial crisis, especially its impact on the political consciousness of educated men. Third, the association's history illuminates Tanganyika's political dynamics: the interplay among regions and social groups; the relationships between town and country, capital and provinces; the cyclical pattern of political activity; and the collective learning which is the core of a people's political evolution.

Finally, the African Association was the institution through which many diverse ideas and ambitions were woven into political nationalism. The strands led back into the territory's special colonial experience, nineteenth-century change, and the character of pre-colonial societies. As the association grew it absorbed many local political aspirations while narrowing the ideas of educated men from a racial or continental to a territorial perspective. The association's structure eventually provided the framework for a unitary nationalist movement unique in East Africa. In 1954, when new leaders showed it the tactics necessary to regain independence, the association gave birth in a truly organic way to a nationalist movement. That final phase is described later.