Zanzibar

How Child Labour Persists Along Zanzibar’s Blue Economy

As the tide falls on Zanzibar’s western coast, 13-year-old Asha* moves across the reef, her gown flapping in knee-deep water. She carries a plastic basin and a knife. Since dawn, Asha has been prying octopus and scaling fish for drying and selling.

How Community Radio Is Powering Tanzania’s Climate Resilience

At dawn in the mangrove-choked Rufiji estuary, paddles from wooden canoes slice through still waters as a soft voice drifts across the tide.

Zanzibar’s Battle to Save Endangered Turtles Intensifies as Global Study Exposes Deadly Microplastic Threat

On a warm morning at Matemwe, a small crowd gathers behind a rope barrier as the sand begins to tremble. A tiny head pushes through a soft mound of earth, then another, and another. Within minutes, the shallow nest—protected for weeks by a ring of wooden stakes and mesh—comes alive with the rustle of dozens of hatchlings. Volunteers crouch nearby, recording the emergence time and shading the small creatures with their hands to protect them from swooping gulls.

Zanzibar’s Blue Economy Offers Hope Amid Rising Seas and Gender Inequity

At dawn on the white-sand shores of Jambiani, 45-year-old Saada Juma braces herself against the pull of the tide, wrangling ropes laced with seaweed. Her hands, hardened by decades of labor, move instinctively as she secures her aquatic crop.

Tanzania Champions Aquatic Foods at UN Ocean Conference in Nice

With less than six harvest seasons left to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the urgency to find transformative solutions to end hunger, protect the oceans, and build climate resilience dominated the ninth panel session at the 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, France.

International Women’s Day, 2025
In Zanzibar, Women Turn the Tide with Sponge Farming

In the early morning, as the tide pulls away, Zulfa Abdallah ties her scarf tightly around her head. She adjusts her goggles, places a snorkel across her forehead, and wades into the chest-deep waters off Jambiani village in Zanzibar. The Indian Ocean is her livelihood now, its waves offering a lifeline to women like her who confront challenges of poverty and climate change.

Zanzibar’s Rising Violence Against Women

The story of Feiza*, an 18-year-old girl who was abducted and raped, is a bleak testament to the worsening plight of women in Tanzania’s semi-autonomous archipelago, Zanzibar.

Zanzibar’s Encroaching Ocean Means Less Water

Khadija Komboani’s nearest well is filled with salt water thanks to the rising sea around Tanzania’s Indian Ocean island of Zanzibar.

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