The East African Community (EAC) Diaspora Engagement Programme is in response to a directive by the EAC Sectoral Council of Ministers on Foreign Policy Coordination, which acknowledged the need to develop a regional approach to mobilize the EAC Diaspora to actively participate in the EAC integration process. Following this directive, there have been various efforts to institutionalize diaspora engagement. However, the EAC Partner States still face several challenges in their attempt to engage with their diasporas, including a lack of policy coordination and implementation due to limited coordination between government departments, failure to adapt programmes to diaspora needs and circumstances, and a lack of data and statistics on diaspora. Based on the above state of play, the EAC Diaspora Engagement Programme proposes to work with the EAC and its Partner States to strengthen regional cooperation on diaspora engagement towards the integration of the East African Community (Objective). It will do this by establishing a harmonized and coherent approach to diaspora engagement through the validation of a draft regional Diaspora Policy and Action Plan (Outcome). Additionally, it will aim to anchor this EAC framework to the continental one and seek to leverage the work started under the IOM-UNDP-AUC diaspora engagement framework. This project will involve the development of a gender-sensitive regional analysis of diaspora engagement policies and best practices among EAC Partner States (Output 1.1) and the organization of a diaspora outreach forum to engage directly with the diasporas on their needs, interests and expectations for an EAC policy (Output 1.2). Finally, the learnings from this participatory process will inform the development of a draft regional Diaspora Policy and Action Plan (Output 1.3).