This article explores the continuing hold that colonial categories still exercise in contemporary constructions of African urbanism ? even in the context of a city being profoundly transformed by globalizing forces and processes. Since the mid-1980s, urban plans and programmes have advocated conserving Mji Mkongwe, Zanzibar as cultural property ? a historic asset o...

Coastal East Africa has been dramatically re-imagined in recent years. Popular culture and mass media have played a central role in sparking new visions of how Zanzibar in particular “connects” with the wider world. For more than a decade now, both the Zanzibar International Film Festival (ZIFF) and the Sauti za Busara music festival have worked to resituate Zanzib...