The Indian Ocean has long been a cosmopolitan place and the circulation of people has, over the centuries, created a web of overlapping transnational networks based on religion, kinship and trade. In this article, I examine the similarities and the differences in diasporic practices and relationships with the homeland using two of these groups – Zanzibaris of Hadra...

In 1993 the Sanduk, a French microcredit project that was explicitly modelled on the Bangladeshi Grameen Bank, was established on Ngazidja. Reasoning that in order to succeed the project would need to adapt to local conditions, the project operators drew up a blueprint for the project that was inspired by the Grameen Bank but attentive to the specific social and cu...