AbstractThe modern vegetation of East Africa is a complex mosaic of rainforest patches; small islands of tropic‐alpine vegetation; extensive savannas, ranging from almost pure grassland to wooded savannas; thickets; and montane grassland and forest. Here I trace the evolution of these vegetation types through the Cenozoic. Paleogene East Africa was most likely geomorphologically subdued and, as the few Eocene fossil sites suggest, a woodland in a seasonal climate. Woodland rather than rainforest may well have been the regional vegetation. Mountain building started with the Oligocene trap lava flows in Ethiopia, on which rainforest developed, with little evidence of grass and none of montane forests. The uplift of the East African Plateau took place during the middle Miocene. Fossil sites indicate the presence of rainforest, montane forest and thicket, and wooded grassland, often in close juxtaposition, from 17 to 10 Ma. By 10 Ma, marine deposits indicate extensive grassland in the region and isotope analysis indicates that this was a C3 grassland. In the later Miocene rifting, first of the western Albertine Rift and then of the eastern Gregory Rift, added to the complexity of the environment. The building of the high strato‐volcanos during the later Mio‐Pliocene added environments suitable for tropic‐alpine vegetation. During this time, the C3 grassland was replaced by C4 savannas, although overall the extent of grassland was reduced from the mid‐Miocene high to the current low level. Lake‐level fluctuations during the Quaternary indicate substantial variation in rainfall, presumably as a result of movements in the intertropical convergence zone and the Congo air boundary, but the impact of these fluctuations on the vegetation is still speculative. I argue that, overall, there was an increase in the complexity of East African vegetation complexity during the Neogene, largely as a result of orogeny. The impact of Quaternary climatic fluctuation is still poorly understood.