In August 1952, students at Makerere University College, Kampala, went on strike. Chapter 1 connects the strike – and its leader Abu Mayanja – to the regional crises of 1952–1953: the Mau Mau uprising and the imposition of the Central African Federation. Education institutions and party politics came into unprecedented dialogue in this period, but this process was not directed from above by an older generation of nationalist leaders. Secondary school graduates, college students and newly qualified schoolteachers all encouraged this shift as they sought to define a global role for this regional cohort, thinking through regional comparisons, historical crossroads and notions of constitutional protest. Returning repeatedly to Makerere, this chapter focuses on correspondence around the strike, networks of schoolteachers, party-political student clubs, student publishing and anti-Federation newsletters. These examples demonstrate the importance of regional structures – and of how young people responded to these structures – as they set their sights on anticolonial work beyond the region.