Every morning before dawn, thousands of wooden boats push out from Zanzibar’s shores towards the shallow reefs glowing underneath the turquoise water or the deeper areas between the islands and mainland Tanzania. By the time the mosques start their call for morning prayer, tonnes of fish have already been caught and brought to land.

In 2023, Zanzibar recorded roughly 100,000 tonnes in total catch – more than enough to feed the 1.9 million residents who consume on average 21 kilograms of fish per year, as well as the nearly one million tourists staying in the islands’ over 800 hotels and guesthouses each year.

And yet, up to 40% of Zanzibar’s total catch is lost or wasted.

Most strikingly, Zanzibar imports frozen fish. Much of it comes from mainland Tanzania*, Oman, China and South Africa. For an archipelago, that sounds like a contradiction. Somewhere between the ocean and your plate, the system begins to fail.

Mohamed the Fisherman:

For Mohamed, a 42-year-old fisherman from central Zanzibar, the pressure begins long before sunrise. Each morning, at around 3 a.m., he and his three-man crew push off from Zanzibar’s shores in a Ngalwa - a narrow wooden boat fitted with a 25-horsepower outboard engine.

“We prefer fishing close to the reefs”, he said as we walked through Malindi Landing Site. “That’s where I know the waters best. I know exactly where to drop the lines.”

By the time Mohamed returns to the landing site, the market is already fully awake. Fishermen are rushing from their boats to the selling stations while buyers weave through piles of seafood laid out beneath the market’s metal roof. The place is loud with auctioneers shouting out prices while the boat engines continue rumbling at the docks.

Located on the edge of Stone Town - the island’s biggest city - Malindi is the largest among Zanzibar’s roughly 300 informal and formal landing sites, and one of the few with functioning cold storage infrastructure.

“This place is my second home”, Mohamed says. “Everyone knows me, and I know everyone. They call me the boss”.

Mohamed has spent most of his life fishing these waters - 25 years. His father fished. So did his grandfather. Like many professions on the island, fishing often remains deeply generational.

Using handlines, basket traps, and drag nets, the crew catches whatever the sea offers that day: snapper, octopus, dagaa, or, if fortune allows, tuna. Once back on shore, the fish is cleaned and rushed to buyers before the heat begins to take hold. This means that by 8 a.m., the clock becomes the changomoto (challenge in Swahili).

But Mohamed doesn’t own the boat. Nor the engine attached to it. Both belong to a middleman who finances the operation for a share of the catch and significant control over where it is sold. This arrangement traps many fishermen in a cycle that’s difficult to escape. What emerges is a market where urgency determines price more than supply does. Fishermen sell quickly not because they want to, but because they often cannot afford not to. And when an entire supply chain depends on distressed selling, reliability becomes difficult to sustain at scale.

The Rare Ice:

In Zanzibar’s humidity - particularly from December to June - the fish that has not been sold by around 11 a.m. risks spoiling quickly. Ice can therefore buy the fishermen more time. However, that ice is a luxury, particularly for those not fishing out of Malindi.

Near the docks, three ice-making facilities operate throughout the morning: two industrial-sized units inside an enormous storage hall and a refrigerated shipping container outside where fishermen stand in line to buy the blocks of ice.

According to Mohamed and workers at the site, the ice facilities were originally operated by the government. But keeping them running became too expensive.

A standard block of ice currently sells for around 500 shillings – roughly 20c – leaving little room to cover operating costs. Workers at Malindi pointed to rising labor expenses as part of the challenge, particularly after Zanzibar’s President, Dr. Hussein Ali Mwinyi, recently announced a 67% increase in the minimum wage for government employees, from 300,000 shillings to 500,000 shillings per month (roughly $115 to $191).

The government eventually leased the facilities to a private operator. I met him briefly; he declined to speak on the record. But the fact that it’s a private operator rather than the government changes the dynamic: what was once a public infrastructure now operates as a business.

Access to time, in return, becomes unevenly distributed. Fishermen who can afford and who benefit from cold storage gain a few additional hours to sell their catch. However, most fishermen who operate from landing sites without such infrastructure don’t have that buffer.

That pressure ripples through the entire cold chain. Hotels and large buyers require stable supply, predictable quality, and payment structures that fishermen like Mohamed are rarely positioned to accommodate, never mind on a large scale.

In theory, fishermen like Mohamed could sell directly to hotels and restaurants. The supply and demand are there. But the economics rarely work in their favor. Hotels operate on delayed payment cycles, often settling their invoices weeks or even months later. For fishermen operating day to day, that delay is impossible to absorb, as they need to pay for the boat and engine.

This leaves hotels and restaurants relying on a small number of large traders and suppliers who have the cold storage, liquidity, and the financial cushion required to absorb delayed payments.

The result is a fragmented market built around urgency rather than coordination. Fish is abundant, but time isn’t. And without widespread cold storage infrastructure, much of Zanzibar’s seafood economy remains trapped in short-term transactions, often struggling to move up the supply chain while staying fresh.

Idryssa the Storage Man:

Mohamed takes me to the next stop: a pair of heavy freezers adjacent to the ice facility. As he slides the heavy door open, a wave of cold fog spills out.

Inside, large tuna lie haphazardly stacked on top of one another, most with fishing lines hanging from their mouths.

“These are not from today’s catch”, Mohamed says.

The fish arrived on a deep-sea vessel operating in waters near Madagascar and the Comoros, which are among the richest tuna grounds in the Indian Ocean. According to Mohamed, the vessel is government-owned but leased to a private operator. The fishermen aboard remain at sea for up to three months before returning with tonnes of tuna, ready to be handed over to Idryssa, a middleman and trader who leases the freezers from the government.

Sitting near the freezers with a cup of coffee and his accounting ledger resting on the table, he describes his business. Next to us, fishermen are trying to hastily sell their catch. Idryssa buys roughly 30 tonnes of fish from the big vessel at a time, often paying around 200 million shillings (roughly $76,630). A down payment of roughly 50 million shillings ($19,160) secures the sale; the rest is settled later.

Unlike Mohamed or the fishermen haggling right next to us, Idryssa does not need to sell immediately. He can hold fish in cold storage, wait for buyers, and negotiate from a position of time rather than urgency.

One might expect someone operating at that scale to sell directly to hotels. He does not.

“I don’t deal with hotels anymore”, he said, while flipping through his ledger. “They create problems and don’t pay on time.” One hotel owes him roughly 30 million shillings – around $11,000. Instead, Idryssa now sells to another supplier who is willing to take the risk in dealing with the hotels.

So, while Idryssa occupies a prestigious position in the cold chain, the system remains fragile. The further up Zanzibar’s seafood cold chain moves, the more the business becomes about absorbing risk and buying time.

For Zanzibar’s hotels and restaurants, importing fish can ultimately become less risky than depending on a local supply chain where refrigeration is limited, payment structures are unstable, and much of the seafood trade operates through distressed cash transactions at the dock.

Zanzibar imports fish not because its waters lack supply, but because too little infrastructure, storage and bargaining power remains in the hands of the people catching it.

That’s the broken cold chain summed up.

*While Zanzibar is part of Tanzania, its semi-autonomous status makes it necessary for trade between mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar to be subject to documentation, including import permits.

Two hours with the ferry to Dar es Salaam, 17-hour bus ride. Nairobi at last. I walked into a market bathed in colors, a feast of textiles, a trove of masks, beads, and baskets everywhere. But that wasn’t actually the plan. I’ll tell you the actual plan in a minute.

West Africa Market in Nairobi is a two-story sokoni (Swahili for market) buried in the heart of Nairobi’s Central Business District (CBD). Buried in, or looming over, depending on how you arrive. Either way, you’ll miss it if nobody tells you about it. No sign, never mind tourist buses. Just a gate, a flight of stairs, another gate, and then two floors with around 8 rooms per floor, each packed wall to wall with West and Central African artifacts. I spent 7 hours there across two days. On both days, I was the only customer. I barely took pictures out of respect for their living space and because they didn’t want to be photographed.

The merchants here mostly hail from the Gambia and Cameroon. One of them from DRC. They live in their shops and sell to bigger vendors from across East and Southern Africa.

I chatted with all of them but ended up spending most of my time with Abu, from Cameroon, in what was both his shop and home away from home. The place was decorated in or devoured by artifacts from the Bamileke People, which he’d already sold to souvenir shops, hotels, including to some big-named hotel franchise. We talked for a long time. About his business, about Ibrahim Traoré, Pan-Africanism, about football, about Samuel Eto’o and his striking appetite for power inside Cameroonian football. Before leaving, he gave me his business card and insisted I should visit his shop in Yaoundé if I ever made it to Cameroon. Then, in the same breath, he added that Yaoundé isn’t really a place you’d want to go right now. “Nothing exciting happening there” he said, “not like Nairobi, Kinshasa, Lomé or Abidjan”. But still, I should come. He’d show me around. That business card isn’t going nowhere.

Abu, like most other vendors, goes back home roughly twice a year - depending on how business is moving in Nairobi, whether the stocks need replenishing, and whether the margins make the trip worth it. Most travel by air.

But then there’s Pipson, from DRC, who until the war in eastern DRC re-erupted in early 2025 made the journey from Nairobi to Bukavu by road. That’s now closed to him.

For everyone else – and especially now with the war in the Gulf sending jet fuel prices through the roof – it also boils down to ticket costs. For those unfamiliar: flying within Africa is, categorically, far more expensive than, say, within Europe or across the US. The reasons are layered: higher taxes levied directly to consumers, a shortage of open-skies agreements implemented, and a colonial imprint in which transportation hubs – including air routes – were conceptualized to connect African cities to the colonizers rather than nurture intra-African trade routes. Then you also have lower passenger volumes that prevent many airlines from reaching the economies of scale needed to keep prices down, and a fuel market exposed enough that any shock to global oil supply hits African carriers disproportionately hard. To me, it reads like a market failure rooted in colonialism that then hardened into a mix of economic protectionism and some unimplemented agreements designed to make flying across the continent cheaper (or, framed differently, make pan-African mobility a real thing).

I’ll set the market and flight costs aside for now. But if you want to hear more about these vendors - how they find their goods, how they got here in the first place, how they experience Nairobi - let me know and I’ll take you further in.

And if you’ve come this far, let me say thank you, really. This is all new to me. If there’s something you’d like me to cover, or if you’d rather I start doing short video dispatches alongside writing, let me know. Feedback means a lot at this stage.

Oh, and the reason I came to Nairobi in the first place. To see the city, meet some friends and friends of friends, and plant my seeds, professionally speaking. But mostly, it was to finally meet Jack, with whom I was supposed to travel onwards. Entry issues and timing constraints pushed that back by three weeks. Honestly, this is far from a simple thing to pull off. But if all goes well, next stop: eastern DRC.

When you try buying a car in Zanzibar, you’re in for a fun and bumpy ride. But it’s about the journey and not the destination, right? So I want to take you on this one. Because I learnt a lot. Not about cars, don’t worry. But rather about the many gears we shifted through before those keys were finally ours to turn. And also about the life of Rama, the Fundi (mechanic/handyperson in Swahili), and the head garagist who was a truck driver in Mozambique until an ISIS affiliated group began an insurgency. Buckle up, let’s go!

Cars are luxury goods for urban dwellers, especially when a nifty public transport system is doing the job. When it comes to Zanzibar, you can get around without a car for shortish trips. Daladalas (buses), Badjajis (tuktuks), Bodabodas (motorbikes), and taxis are abundant. They weave you through traffic, they’re not too expensive if you haggle (around $2.30 for a 15 min Badjaji ride, $1.15 for a Bodaboda, and $0.19 for the same trip with the Daladala). And on top of that, the drivers will probably give you some of the better conversations you’ll have on the island*. No, not those 2am drunk talks with the cab driver: 98% of the around 1,9 million Zanzibaris are of Muslim faith. And with Ramadhan in full swing, such conversations are not on the cards.

Right, Rama. He’s the Fundi who helped us find our thirdhand car. We met him on a sweltering Friday afternoon, referred by one of Nina’s friends. Within minutes of meeting Rama, he was greeting people left and right. He knew a lot of people. A lot of people knew him (see video below of him interacting with people). I was intrigued. But the focus was on getting a gari (Swahili for car). We checked some out, Rama handed out his curses and blessings accordingly. When we settled on one, after sitting in the owner’s living room for six hours, drafting a dubious contract with the owner’s daughter, I asked Rama if I could spend some time at his garage. He said Karibu. Welcome in Swahili. And off we went to West Garage.

The Squad
Maungani - Vijijini Road on your right side. Rama’s imperium. We pulled up with the patient, our brand-new-old 2003 Suzuki Escudo in need of some stitching. In no time, Rama’s team got to work: apprentice mechanics Faisal, Youssouf, and Mpemba, and the head garagist, Kibiriti. Hands dirty, down to business, with banter and joking around, that’s allowed, even encouraged with Rama. His work ethics: set limits, be patient, teach them, and let them teach each other discipline, allow for mistakes, and give them courage. Around 1.5 years ago, through a partnership with Zanzibar’s Karume Institute of Science and Technology, Rama took five students under his wing, all of them between 16 and 18, from modest families, supported by the government to enrol in the institute. Despite my below elementary Swahili (well below), I bonded with them over football and music. We’ll be kicking the ball together soon, that’s decided.

RaMayor
Rama is a born and raised Zanzibari with a unique story. He grew up in the 80s on the outskirts of Stonetown with his mother and two siblings. His father was tragically killed. We’ll leave it at that. Strolling around the streets of Stonetown, Rama met Garry, a retired US veteran from Texas who had arrived in Zanzibar for reasons that weren’t entirely clear. It wasn’t an obvious destination. No doubt, the island must have been beautiful back then as well. But as Rama explained, post-revolution Zanzibar wasn’t exactly the place to be: poor, tensions were still very high, barely any infrastructure, and tourists were out of sight. “You cannot compare the Zanzibar of back then with what we are seeing today”, he told me, as he took me past Soko La Mwanakwerekwe, one of the islands biggest markets. But even now there are some things that make him think that life here is anachronistic: constant electricity and water shortages being the biggest headaches.

But Rama doesn’t complain much. Instead, he tells you stories. Like the time he and Garry set up a game hunting tourism operation, taking clients across Namibia, South Africa, Kenya, and Tanzania. Or the time they got into a minor police chase after Garry decided to travel with some illegal substances and got flagged at a checkpoint. Garry was behind the wheel, and instead of waiting to see if the cop would pocket the bribe, Garry floored it, and off they drove into the bushes.

Garry passed away in 2021 in Texas. He didn’t want to leave the island though Rama convinced him it was time to spend his last years back in the US. Rama still remembers him as his second father, the man who, as he put it, “showed me the world”.

Kibiriti (matchbox)
At first, a man of few words. He was the most senior staff of the crew, squatting next to the cars, in the shade, making sure the boys were doing a good job on the cars.

Day 1, he kept to himself. But when I returned the following day, it was just the two of us at West Garage. And let me tell you, he had things to tell.

Iddys is his real name but he goes by Kibiriti. Most people here have a nickname. His came from a souvenir shop he opened in Stonetown in the 1990s with Rama’s younger brother. The shop was called Kibiriti, Swahili for matchbox. It didn’t survive. So Kibiriti tried his luck as a textile trader, buying and selling goods to small vendors across East and Central Africa. When that dried up, he moved to South Africa to work in the mining industry, and then took a final stint as a truck driver for an American gas company in Mozambique. Yet that chapter also came to a close, as the ISIS-affiliated group Ansar al-Sunna tightened its grip on the oil-rich region of Cabo Delgado in the north of the country (video below is him showing me where Ansar al-Sunna was operating). Kibiriti told me quite bluntly: “Mzungus (Swahili for white people) were the first to leave”. And with that, his time in Mozambique was over. He returned to his homeland to start working for and with his family friend, Rama.

Up next
Getting to know these guys was awesome. I learnt a lot. There were more stories I’d like to share, but some I was asked to keep to myself, and others I’m holding back for something bigger. I’m also preparing for a trip I’ll hopefully be able to share with you soon. It won’t be in Zanzibar.

*There’s great book by Khaled Al Khamissi called Taxi that captures the life of taxi drivers in Cairo (some of the stories are fictionalized but that’s okay)

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24 hours on the island, and it was already time for my first highlight. The biggest football fixture of the year for the country, for sure. Some would say in all of East Africa. One of the fiercest derbies on the continent: Young Africans S.C. (Yanga) vs Simba S.C.

It didn’t take long to understand that this derby doesn’t just happen on matchday. It occupies the lives of Tanzanians - mainlanders and Zanzibaris alike - for weeks before a ball is even kicked. As someone who has spent years in the Vienna Derby trenches supporting Rapid Wien, I get it. But every derby has its own DNA. Its own past, its own guarded gospel, and its own score to settle.

Since the Tanzanian Premier League kicked off in 1965, Yanga and Simba have been neck and neck every season.* But here, like in all other derbies, the title is secondary.** The grand prize is winning against your archenemy... or beating them. The result reads the same, but the feeling isn’t. Sometimes your whole purpose as a fan is to either win or just to beat them. Some people will understand that distinction, others won’t. That’s totally fine.

History matters in football, and even more so in derbies. While I asked fans outside the stadium about their clubs’ origins, they began arguing: Wananchis - means citizens in Swahili, the name Yanga fans go by - insist their club came first. The Wekundu wa Msimbazi - The Reds from Msimbazi, as Simba fans are known - will tell you the same about their club. If you want the jerseys to settle it: Yanga was founded in 1935, Simba in 1936.

Whatever gets your ball rolling. What’s undisputed is that under British colonial rule, football in Tanganyika was more than just a game. It was a tool to bring Tanganyikans together, to organize, formalize, and give shape to movements for independence across society, particularly among the working class.

I’m digressing, but it’s worth noting that, in this context, Yanga’s ties to the independence movement run deep, as it is known to be the club most closely associated with the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), many of whose senior members were closely tied to the club. As for Simba, some of its founding members were initially affiliated with Yanga before splitting off to form a new club, first called Queens, then Sunderland, and eventually renaming themselves Simba (Swahili for lion) in 1971.

Before the game, I got talking with Andrew, a die-hard Simba fan from Uganda living in Tanzania in his late 30s. He was adamant that Simba was always the people’s club too. But Andrew’s claim may not have matched with my mini pre-game research. According to Musisa Edwin Gamba’ “Sunderland was started by the old schoolmates of the Government School in Kariakoo[...]Most of the players, members, and supporters of Sunderland were educated and worked as clerks in government. Also, many Arabs supported the club and normally the club received financial support from wealthy Arab traders. Therefore, since Yanga was massively supported by common people with low income and lacked formal education, it subsequently gained the image of the team of local people (timu ya wananchi or timu ya wenyeji ), while Sunderland was regarded as a team of “immigrants’ or “outsiders” (timu ya wageni).” Andrew still wasn’t buying it.

On to the game. Two Dar es Salaam clubs, playing their derby in Zanzibar? They could’ve used the Benjamin Mkapa Stadium - shared by both, max. capacity of 60,000 - but instead moved to the more modest Amaan Stadium, which can hold around 15,000. The why is trivial to me, but people in and around the stadium definitely had their opinions.

First, Yanga previously played some of its games in Zanzibar and had a good winning streak. And in derby football, you don’t mess with superstition. Another theory was that Yanga has a strong fanbase on the island, tied to its role in Zanzibar’s independence and eventual unification with the mainland in April 1964. I guess that’s symbolism meshed with a sliver of commercial opportunities?

The third reason came from Andrew who said that after months of hefty political tensions across the country, bringing the game to Zanzibar felt like a deliberate political message from the higher echelons that even the fiercest of rivalries can be kept on the pitch and out of the streets. That, according to him, is the spirit that Zanzibaris carry, and what the clubs wanted to showcase to the rest of the country: that despite your colors, you can share a space without it turning ugly. Unity, I guess?

Inside the stadium, that idea was being tested in real time. What usually would look like a clear split - green and yellow on one side, red and white on the other - was here a full color cacaphony. For me, coming from the rigid tribalism of the Wiener Derby, it felt strange. Andrew said it was unusual for him too. There were a few scuffles here and there, nothing serious, nothing that escalated. Mostly it just felt like two sets of fans sharing the same steamy air. Oh, and the Vuvuzelas. Constant, relentless, everywhere. Definitely not my thing. The Cassava Chips, sprinkled with fresh chili, were, however, great.

Ticket cost me TZS 10’000 (around $4). Outside, I ate well: Katlesi (minced fish stuffed in potato cutlets) and shared some dragonfruit with my partner, Nina, and Andrew. No security check going in, free seating inside.

The game ended in a 0:0 draw. Simba scored a goal but it was unjustly stripped away from them, as the referee made an awful offiside call. This was the topic of discussion after the game, well into the night.

*Yanga have won the championship 27 times, Simba 21.
**Across the 114 derbies, Yanga were in the lead: 42 wins, 40 draws, 32 losses.

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